he railed against government enforced integration. Criswell stated that desegregation is “a denial of all that we believe in.” He went on to say that Brown v Board was “foolishness” and an “idiocy,” and he called anyone who advocated for racial integration “a bunch of infidels, dying from the neck up.”52 Notably, Criswell did moderate some of his stances and statements later in life, but not before thousands of Christians in his own congregation and tens of thousands more of his followers nationwide had absorbed his views of civil rights and activists like King.
