Profile in black and white

by Howard H. Quint

In the best tradition of the Social Gospel, the Morning News initially took the opposite view, holding that the church certainly “should become interested in segregation. So long as we limit ministers to talks of home, mother, God and country,” wrote Editor Jack H. O’Dowd, “we won’t have a Christian nation, but a nation that tolerates the seeds of Christian thought and influence.” More churchmen were needed who were willing “to tie the power of Christianity to the problems of living.” Yet in less than three months O’Dowd was criticizing the Reverend Edward L. Byrd of Florence for attacking segregation. He argued that while segregation could not be justified “on the basis of Christianity and absolute morality,” it was “easily defended on the grounds of public good and social expediency.” Religion was of “greatest benefit” only when its application would “enrich the people. An immediate application of the theory of segregation’s immorality would not be a blessing to our Southland.” Disparaging Byrd’s call for “courageous and Christian leadership” in facing the problem, the Morning News stated that leadership was neither “a matter of blowing the bugles of war from the rear” nor “a matter of leading your people into destruction for a cause being fought the wrong way at the wrong time.”[184]

Among the various Protestant religious denominations opponents of integration have been either strong enough to prevent any action from being taken or able to place the church on record as favoring a continuation of racial segregation. The Methodist Church provides perhaps the best example of a division of opinion. In October, 1954, the annual conference of South Carolina Methodism by a vote of 289 to 148 adopted a resolution stating that the question of racial integration in the public schools could “best be resolved on the state or local level.”

It is apparent to us [said the resolution] that an attempt to integrate the races in our public schools without regard to their relative numbers would work grave injustice to many innocent persons, and in the present instance we fear the Negro would suffer most, as he has often when those far removed from his every day problems have undertaken to speak in his name.

Consideration must also be given to the large number of Negro teachers and administrators in our public schools, lest they be denied leadership among their people.

To compel a parent, whether white or Negro, to send his child to school and at the same time to compel the child to live under conditions which the parents regard to be detrimental to the highest interest would, in our judgment, introduce problems of serious import.[185]

The News and Courier applauded this statement as “a strong and fearless stand,” “a common sense approach,” and “a more truly Christian attitude than the twisting of ‘equality’ to mean forced association.”[186]

The following year, however, the Methodist Church’s annual conference pulled the rug from under its more ardent segregationist friends. On that occasion the conference officially recorded its opposition to the Citizens Councils as organizations “formed for the express purpose of exerting economic pressure.” This statement, introduced by the Reverend A. McKay Brabham, Jr., of Aiken, and the Reverend J. B. Murray of Orangeburg County, drew only scattered negative votes.

Reaction throughout the state was almost unanimously hostile. The Methodists’ resolution, declared the News and Courier, “is not necessarily a full reflection either of the facts or of the sentiments of most churchmen in South Carolina. It is one thing to regard our fellowmen as all God’s creatures. It is quite another thing meekly to submit to pressure against customs and convictions held by our people these many centuries.”[187] L. B. McCord, a former Presbyterian minister, thought it “not unChristian to fire or not hire anyone whose conduct is not wholesome and [does not] contribute to the best interest in the home or wherever that person may work.”[188] The Kingstree Methodist Church, in an especially strong condemnation of its parent body, was still more emphatic. It charged that “too many leaders and ministers in our Methodist Church have been saturated with propaganda and even made to have a guilt complex with reference to the question of integration of the races and have used their high offices as ministers and writers, though innocently we hope, for the purpose of disseminating propaganda which we believe is inspired by Communist or Communist-front organizations.”[189]

The extent of the opposition in some areas to the resolution is well illustrated by the action of the Reverend J. B. Murray’s congregation in forcing his removal from his Orangeburg County charge. In announcing Reverend Murray’s transfer, Dr. Pierce E. Cook, the Orangeburg District Superintendent for the Methodist Church, stated that the Citizens Councils were “not as bad” as the resolution implied. The Councils, he said, were “trying to do something our people in this area are in sympathy with.”[190]

Another example of pressure on supporters of the resolution was the case of the Reverend E. S. Jones of St. Paul’s Methodist Church of Orangeburg. Less than two weeks after adoption of the resolution, Jones, one of its prominent backers, felt constrained to declare publicly: “I have from the beginning felt that it was unwise for the races to be thrown together in the public schools, and I have not changed from that position. It is my conviction that the Church and its ministry must always be positively Christian, not only in its ends but in the ways and means adopted to attain these ends.”[191]