Three days before Christmas 1963, James Rice’s phone rang at four forty-five in the morning. The caller on the line said, “We have warned you about your troublemaking in this community. We have asked you to stop. You have continued it.” Rice was an NAACP leader who had moved to Hot Springs a year earlier in order to lead the Roanoke Baptist Church, one of the oldest African American churches in Hot Springs. Since his arrival, Rice had been active in challenging segregation around the resort, and had received many phone calls throughout the year like this one. The most recent call had come a week before, after it was revealed that Rice had written to President Johnson, the interior secretary, and the head of the National Parks Service calling for an investigation into discrimination in the bathhouses along Bathhouse Row. That time, the caller told Rice, “You’ll get the same thing President Kennedy got.”
Roanoke Baptist was designed by Wallace Rayfield, one of the nation's first professionally trained black architects. He also designed Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
Roanoke Baptist was designed by Wallace Rayfield, one of the nation's first professionally trained black architects. He also designed Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.