By Van Craddock
"Sinkiller" Griffin had no fear tangling with Satan. But hot lead in Longview brought a quick end to the evangelist's 1904 revival.
John L. Griffin was one of the state's most-popular preachers and songwriters more than a century ago. His sermons often were set to music and poetry.
Born in Shreveport, La., in 1863, Griffin migrated to Dallas in 1884. He called himself an "independent Baptist" and pastured an African-American church in Denison. In 1890 the church burned under mysterious circumstances.
Griffin began holding tent revivals and soon was in high demand all over the Lone Star State. It wasn't unusual for him to draw thousands of folks … with whites sitting on one side and blacks on the other.
Griffin was described by the Fort Worth Gazette in 1890 as a "well-fed and sleek specimen … He has a commanding stature, having some six foot and more of perpendicular measurement. He sports a mustache and is dressed in faultless ministerial garb."
A Houston newspaper in 1911 noted Griffin "has visited every large city in the state a dozen times … Sinkiller's voice is as soft and musical as the hum of the water mill, but it has the volume and power of the thunder's sullen roar."
Griffin preached in Marshall in April 1892 and at Mineola in September 1903. Typical was the evangelist's appearance in Tyler in June 1897.
"Sinkiller Griffin preached one of his inimitable sermons last night on the public plaza to not less than 3,000 people, white and black," said one newspaper. "Dr. Griffin betrayed no embarrassment by standing on the ground made historic by oratory and debates.
"Reading one of the good old hymns, he asked everybody to join in singing. After a powerful prayer he bid the immense audience to rise and sing the soul-stirring hymn, 'The Old Time Religion, 'Tis good enough for me.' Sinkiller's text was from Revelation and his discourse was not only logical but humorous. It was also dramatic. With a Svengali wave of the hand, a grunt and grimace, he began, as he expressed it, to 'make the fur fly.'"
Griffin had promised "to give Satan large numbers of uppercuts and knockout blows," and the Smith County crowd wasn't disappointed.
However, Sinkiller's tent revival in Longview ended badly.
Excitement was high in March 1904 when Griffin brought his ministry to Gregg County. As usual, he preached to large crowds, black and white. But some white Texans were upset by Griffin's efforts to register African-Americans to vote.
On March 15 "Rev. Griffin had just preached one of his characteristic sermons and the enthusiasm was high," reported a Dallas newspaper. "While leaving the tent at about 11 o'clock was when the shooting occurred."
As Griffin was making his way through the audience, "ten or twelve shots were fired by unknown parties, but without injury to anyone." Pandemonium resulted as the large crowd scattered in every direction.
Shaken, Griffin was quickly ushered out of town. Some witnesses "claimed the shots did not pass any where near the preacher, but were only intended to frighten him."
Others, however, believed "that the preacher's life was greatly endangered and the effort was really to kill him."
Interestingly, there was no mention of the incident in the following week's edition of the Longview Times-Clarion.
Sinkiller's popularity waned over the years and little is known about his latter life. In the 1930s and 1940s he served as a chaplain for the Texas prison system. In 1934 musicologist John Lomax recorded Griffin singing his song "Mighty Storm."
The tune is about the 1900 Galveston Flood and ends with the words, "But the Lord has a sin killer on his side."
One tale about Sinkiller is that he gave famed Texas musician Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter his nickname. Griffin reportedly told the East Texas singer, "Instead of guts, you've got lead in your belly. That's who you are, old Leadbelly."