The Margaret L. Kolb Lecture on Faith and Public Life was conceived out of our desire to honor the legacy of the late Margaret Kolb, a longtime member of our church and a pioneer for justice in our city. Given Margaret’s fervent belief that theological and civic virtues go hand in hand, we sought to develop a lecture series that speaks to the ways in which Christian faith is brought to bear on the common good.

Margaret Kolb was a devoted member of Pulaski Heights Baptist Church from 1947 until her death in 2009. She taught Sunday School classes for children and young adults and led the Women’s Missionary Union, and her faith reached far beyond the walls of Pulaski Heights Baptist Church. 

According to Sara Alderman Murphy’s book, Breaking the Silence, Margaret’s justice-oriented faith grew out of her astute observations of racism in the South. During the integration crisis at Little Rock Central High School, Margaret was a leader and organizer of the Women’s Emergency Committee, launched in response to Orval Faubus’ closure of the school to prevent further desegregation. The WEC operated out of Kolb’s home in Hillcrest, specifically the Colonial Court “utility room” where the women educated, lobbied, organized, and masterminded the recall of extremist school board members, allowing schools to be reopened and the law of the land to be followed. 

It was a dangerous time to be doing this kind of work. Margaret often received threatening phone calls or rocks thrown through her window, and the WEC was even put under surveillance by pro-Faubus forces. But according to Margaret, who received her master’s degree from the Carver School of Missions and Social Work at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, such was the cost of following Jesus. As she so aptly put it in an interview: “We were church women who had a strong sense of right and wrong and a strong sense of responsibility for equal rights… We were building a future for what we considered New Testament thinking. Although it was never mentioned and never taught as such, it was obvious to me that’s what we were doing. It was challenging… to be disciples that followed Jesus’ example.”

Indeed, that's the goal of these lectures: to encourage disciples to follow the way of Jesus.