Lockhart Denounces The Dance

Lockhart appears to have been a popular speaker while in Champaign Urbana during the winter of 1930. February 19, 1930 Urbana Courier-Herald.

"You ask me what is wrong about the modern dance," said Dr. Lockhart, evangelist, speaking last night at University Place Church of Christ, "and I will tell you in language you can understand. The thing that is wrong about the modern dance is not the life and it is not the music, nor is it even the way they dress in the modern dance though the dance in the past eight years has greatly affected the style of women's dressing for now in the close embraces of the modern dance there must be no wearing apparel that will impede the perfect blending of the bodies, but the thing that is wrong is the intimacy that is not only permitted by the modern dance between the sexes but is practically demanded. Mother, you will find that the old rule of the dancing master that the dancers shall keep their bodies six inches apart has long ago been discarded and now in the tango, fox trot, camel trot and two-step, bunny hug, grizzly bear, turkey trot, angle worm wiggle, Salome glide, cheek to cheek, telephone booth and tag dances, Charleston and black bottom, you can not get a piece of tissue paper between their bodies and it takes more than the stopping of the music oftimes to pry them apart from the entrancing embrace.'Yes sir, that is what is wrong with the modern dance.

"It cultivates intimacy, it breaks down modesty, it murders purity, it develops brazenness, it exalts the physical and dethrones the spiritual, if opens the temptations to youth at a- time when every safeguard to the sanctity of the body should be given to our boys and girls.

"I was going down the streets of my home city one night recently and passed one of our municipal dance halls. You see,we are so solicitous in our big cities for the small town and country boys and girls who come into the city and we are so anxious that they should feel at home that our society club women have undertaken under the sanction of our city government to chaperon properly the love making in these places where we want our young people to meet. Oh wonderful philanthropic maker of homes! Well, I was going past one of these places and looked up and saw them wiggling and warbling. They- were not dancing—there was no gliding or rythmic, motion, no grace and beauty of action. They were just folded in one another's arms am1 standing in a small space about three feet square - wiggling and wabbljng. I guess this must have been a 'telephone booth dance'. Well, an old drunk happened along just then, all loaded up with bootleg whisky and as he looked up at tihis scene. he hiccoughed and said, 'Say, mister, (hic, hic) that is where they start (hic) to hell' ain't it?' I said, 'I think you are about right mister.' "

"But you say to me, 'I never allow my son or daughter to go to one of these "public dances.' Oh, you don't, don't you? Well, what do you allow"! Oh, just a private dance in our own home. All right, my friend, travel with me a little while tonight. Your daughter and son leave the home that encourages the private dance and they go away to college. Your daughter joins a sorority and your son a fraternity; And of course the frat dances arc the very highest type of dances, and of course they are propeily chaperoned by some college ma or college pa elected for that purpose. The frat dances are only allowed at stated intervals, but young America decides that one or two nights a week are not sufficient, so modern young America puts up an up-to-the-minute dancing party and charters the wayside inn for the night, and it is two or three or four o'clock in the morning when your son and daughter return to the city.

"Now listen to me and I will show you the steps. It is first the home dance, then the private dance at the club, then, the sorority-fraternity dance, then the wayside, inn dance, and .then the public dance hall , and then it is a ruined unchaste life and a broken home and a broken heart and hell. And often it is hell before they get to the public dance.


"I want to' tell you that there it no more comparison between the modern dance and tho old fashioned dances of tho early days than there is between a Methodist prayer lnootinj and tho wildost night of a cowboy carnival. The thing that gets me that some good old sister or grandma in the church that does not know any moro about tho modern dance than a Duroc Jersey hog ltnows nbout conducting a revival meeting, to come to me, who has threo children right at tho social age and say, 'Now do not be too hard on the children, and don't keep them out of good society, for times have changod you know.' Yes grandmother, times have changed, but morality nnd decency and purity and honor have not changed and I am under just as much obligation to guide my young people safely through as you are to save your boy and girl.

"I tell you that the dance us it is practiced today is doing more to undermine tho purity and chastity of our youth and creating more dlvorce oases than any influence that is at work in our moderb complex social llfe! I would not fight this thing so hard if it were merely the mature men and women who must go up against this baleful Influence, but it ls being Inveighed into our high schools and grade schools under the guise of the social hour all over the land. And it is forcing a situation that must be met by an aroused public conscience, let us give our children a chance to grow up and develop and gain poise before we throw them together in such intimate contact an the modern dance demands.

The Florence Crlttenden home in a recent published statement brlngs out tho fact that the unfortunate gils that find thelr way there have in recent years been little glrls from 12 to 16 years of age and the average age has fallen from 21 yours ten years age; to 16 now. A recent questionare sent to similar homes all over the country reveals the startling fact that nine out of ten of the fallen girls in these homes have been frequent attendants of the dance and attribute their downfall in a large measure to its pernicious influence. Of 500,000 fallen women, 375,000 of them testify that the beginning of their life of shame can be attributed to the dance. And for every fallen woman there is at least one fallen man.

"We must drive the modern dance out of our Christian homes, out of churches, out of our public schools and Christian colleges."