On Saturday, February 10, 1900, Kerr said that he was "called" to be pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Tulsa, then a sleepy Creek Indian village in Indian Territory at the crossing of the Frisco and Midland Valley Railroad tracks. His first church was a gothic-styled clapboard wooden church. Kerr was the first permanent Protestant Christian pastor in Tulsa, and the only one until the Baptists obtained a resident minister in 1906. As an early day missionary, Kerr frequently went to Tulsa's "skid row" on First Street to pray, kneeling in the gutter with drunk cowboys on Friday and Saturday nights to lead them to Christ. The 1901 discovery of crude oil transformed Tulsa into a boomtown — the "Oil Capital of the World" — as well as transforming the Kerrs' original missionary vocation to Indians and Freedmen into the pastorate of an all-white church. Tulsa rapidly grew from a population of 600 to 72,000 by 1921: 60,000 whites and 12,000 Blacks. Tulsa's Black district was named "Greenwood". Early on, Kerr made friends with the Black pastors in Greenwood, who were publicly disdained by Tulsa's other prominent white clergy.
On the afternoon and evening of May 30, 1921, a large crowd of white people began assembling outside of the Tulsa County Courthouse at 6th Street and Boulder Avenue. The size of the crowd was estimated at two thousand people. Many of these demanded that the sheriff turn overDick Rowland to them, clearly indicating that they intended to lynch the young man. The sheriff was determined to prevent a lynching and refused their demands. Instead, he and several armed deputies barricaded the building. In the early evening, the sheriff addressed the crowd and told them to go home. Meanwhile, some of the black clergymen called Reverend Kerr on the telephone and asked for his assistance. After discussing the situation with his family, Kerr responded by going to the courthouse and pleading with the would-be lynch mob to go home. The mob ignored his plea and continued threatening to storm the building. The next day, after armed whites invaded the Greenwood district, black clergymen again called Kerr for assistance. On his own, not waiting to meet with the church session, Kerr opened the church basement to temporarily house refugees from the violence. The Sunday following the tragedy, C.W. Kerr offered some commentary from the pulpit; to his all-white congregation. He stated that the Tulsa Massacre was the fault of local black citizens aspiring toward equality. The general feeling at the time, between he and his colleagues, was that black presumptuousness -- a term used in those days to denote success-- was a nuisance to white supremacy. Notwithstanding, an opera commemorating Reverend Kerr and his intervention against the Tulsa Race Riot was composed by Lindsay Davidson in 2004 to a libretto by Dr Tom Hubbard.
Anecdotal information
According to a family website called "The Grandfather Kerr Clan Webpage": His favourite story as a guest preacher in Greenwood churches was that of the African, Simon of Cyrene, a Black man who was a gardener with two sons named Alexander and Rufus : Kerr often brought food and clothes to, prayed with, and found jobs for the many homeless people, living under Tulsa's 11th Street Bridge, forgotten by oil-rich Tulsans. After the Dawes Act of 1877 led to the Land Run of 1889, Indians lost most of their territory to usurping Southern poor whites and the petroleum industry. Having personally witnessed Indians being swindled out of their lands and rights with whiskey, Kerr became the foremost temperance crusader in Oklahoma. Kerr's sense of social justice motivated him to sponsor an annual Labour Day service for all trade union members at Tulsa's First Presbyterian Church to encourage democratic unionism as a vehicle for needed social, economic, and political change. He opposed from his pulpit attempts by the local oilmen to bust unions. Kerr held annual summer tent revivals in the vacant lot next to the Tulsa County Courthouse. He brought guests speakers such as Billy Sunday, William Jennings Bryan, and Carrie Nation to Tulsa. As a fellow temperance crusader, Nation frequently stayed with the Kerrs in their home, where she organised raids against the illegal sale of liquor in Tulsa.
Kerr retired as Senior Minister at First Presbyterian in April, 1941 and became Pastor Emeritus. He then became Chaplain of Hillcrest Memorial Hospital in Tulsa. He died on July 18, 1951. He was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery on July 20, 1951. His wife was buried beside him on March 24, 1969.
