When President Jimmy Carter wanted to get the Panama Canal treaties passed in the U.S. Senate in 1977, the Baptist Sunday School teacher turned to gospel music. Or at least to a mostly-blind gospel music disc jockey.
Rev. J. Bazell Mull of Knoxville, Tennessee, was heard on the radio coast-to-coast each night — and elsewhere in North America and the Caribbean — with his “Mull’s Singing Convention” as he broadcast gospel tunes. The New York Times noted one such popular song: “I Went to an Old Camp Meeting with the Devil (But I Came Home with the Lord).” He had an audience of millions, to whom he also sold records and Bibles. And he hosted a Sunday morning TV show, on which Dolly Parton made her first TV appearance.
The 63-year-old Mull left the studio in the basement of his home for multiple trips to the White House to help Carter sell the treaties in which the U.S. gave control of the Panama Canal to the Panama government after controlling the 51-mile long waterway since construction had started seven decades earlier.
“I’m strong for the signing of the canal treaty,” Mull declared during a White House event. “Now suppose we had 9,400 Japanese or Russian troops marching up and down the Mississippi. Even though it was our land, here they’d be right in the middle of us. Do you think we’d like that? Do you? I’ll tell you right now: Doc, we wouldn’t put up with it — but that’s just what they want the people in Panama to do.”
“I had a little boy in the ninth grade in school call me and want to know something about the treaty for a class. I explained it, and he became convinced we should sign it,” the disk jockey-turned-treaty advocate added. “Everybody who understands the treaty is for it. Many of the American people don’t know about it so they are against it. I definitely think we are changing their minds.”
Mull also met with senators, including the key player who happened to be one of his own: Republican Minority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee. Asked in November 1977 to predict the future of the proposed treaties Carter had signed two months earlier with Panama’s military leader Omar Torrijos, Mull said he believed it would pass. Whether his politicking made the difference or not, he proved prophetic.
The first treaty, which gave the U.S. the right to defend the canal from any force that blocked access to all nations, passed the Senate in March 1978. The second, which pledged the U.S. to transfer ownership and control of the canal to the Central American nation on Dec. 31, 1999, passed the following month. On both votes, 16 Republicans (including Baker) joined 52 Democrats (including freshman Joe Biden) in supporting ratification, while 10 Democrats and 22 Republicans opposed them. If just one more senator had voted against them, the treaties would’ve failed.
More than a half-century later as a horse-drawn carriage slowly moved Carter’s flag-draped coffin toward the U.S. Capitol for the former president to lie in state, President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday (Jan. 7) blasted Carter for the Panama Canal treaties. Calling the transfer of the waterway “a terrible thing to do” and “a very big mistake,” Trump falsely claimed Carter sold it for $1 and that Panama had “morally violated” the agreements. Trump then reiterated his threat from last month to take back the canal. On Tuesday, Trump even refused to rule out the possibility of sending U.S. soldiers to take the canal — and seize Greenland from Denmark — from an ally nation.
A cargo ship sails through the Panama Canal on June 13, 2024. (Matias Delacroix/Associated Press)
While Trump fantasizes about retaking the Panama Canal, it’s important to remember how we got here and the roles Christian leaders played. Many U.S. denominations followed American colonialism into that strip of land, but then several faith groups joined Mull in becoming outspoken advocates for returning the land. So this issue of A Public Witness digs into the religious support for building the canal and giving it back to Panama.
For God & Country
After hundreds of years of explorers and colonial rulers dreaming about cutting a canal through the area to speed up travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific sides of the Americas, the French tried in the late 19th century to do it. But the effort failed after more than 20,000 men died from diseases and accidents and they spent the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars today.
The U.S. effort began first by supporting a coup. In 1903, when the territory was still part of Colombia, President Teddy Roosevelt sent U.S. warships to block the Colombian government from ending a Panamanian rebellion. After the Republic of Panama was declared on Nov. 3, 1903, the U.S. quickly recognized the new nation and kept it from being attacked in exchange for a perpetual lease on the land that became known as the Panama Canal Zone. But given that it was signed under the shadow of warships, many Panamanians came to view U.S. control of the canal zone as a violation of Panama’s national sovereignty.
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