Profile in black and white

by Howard H. Quint

The intensity of opposition of many Episcopalians to integration is illustrated by a resolution adopted by Episcopal women’s groups of Sumter, Kingstree, Summerton, Statesburg, and Hagood. In fulfillment of what they considered to be their duty “to see that those in high offices in our government are not influenced by Communist doctrines,” these women, whose mastery of dialectical materialism might legitimately be questioned, pointed out for all to know that integration was “a plan of the Communist Party,” a party which acknowledged “no God except Communism.”[205]

The most overtly pro-segregation religious group in South Carolina is the Southern Methodist Church, made up of those Methodists who had refused to agree to the union of the Northern and Southern branches of Methodism in the 1930’s. Headed in 1955 by the Reverend Lynn Corbit of Bowman, it is relatively small numerically, comprising but three conferences in the entire state. In 1955 the Southern Methodists stated their position in the following terms: “The Southern Methodist Church stands for continued racial segregation in the schools, state and federal installations of all kinds, churches, and all ways of life where it has always been practiced. We wish further to go on record approving any law-abiding organization that has as its aims the upholding of segregation in a peaceful manner.”[206]

In the News and Courier, a member of the Southern Methodists, S. J. Summers, Jr., of Cameron, described his church as being composed of “a dauntless group of congregations” which believed “ardently in the rightness of the Southern Way of Life” and “in the kinship of mankind under God but with the separations and differences He Himself instituted and established.” He noted Southern Methodism’s belief that “the Bible teaches of the decay and ultimate destruction of nations as the inevitable outcome of decadent faith and mongrelized bloods.”[207]

Other denominations have been less outspoken in their views. Presbyterians simply have continued their policy of segregation in churches and educational institutions.[208] In Summerton, the late Reverend Henry Rankin, Northern-born and Princeton-educated, was one of the most active members of the Citizens Council. He sought to impress Negroes “about the fallacy of trying to get their rights by going to court.” Other Presbyterian ministers, as will be noted later, have upheld the Court’s decision as being in line with the basic concepts of Christianity. An unofficial Lutheran position was presented by H. Odelle Harman, Lexington School Superintendent and delegate to the 1956 biennial convention of the national Lutheran church. In opposing a resolution commending integration, Harman told the convention:

The Lutheran Church in South Carolina will not integrate. Resolutions of the kind before us, then, can only serve to hinder the progress and mission of our great church and undo much of that which has been done in the South to promote good will and better relations between the two races.... The Christian church has done much to bring about the confusion and bitterness that we are experiencing in our racial relations in America today.... I do not believe that segregation is basically a religious question.[209]

Among religious groups only the Catholics have given endorsement to the Court decision and to the integration efforts of Negroes. The missionary South Carolina Catholic Church has held that there is no segregation before God; therefore, there should be none in the church. The attitude was given tangible expression by the enrollment of five Negro and 29 white pupils in St. Anne’s parochial school in Rock Hill in the 1954-55 term, the only example of school integration in South Carolina.[210] The Catholics, however, did not desegregate their other schools or hospitals. The number of Catholics in the state is small and only a tiny percentage of their membership is Negro.

Individual ministers frequently address themselves to the race issue. Several condemn segregation as contrary to Christian teachings concerning the brotherhood of man, though a much larger number holds the continuation of segregation desirable. The Reverend Gaston Boyle, a Presbyterian minister from John’s Island, declared that segregation was “totally dependent upon the theory of a ‘superior race,’” a concept which could not “be supported by science, Scripture, or any other fact” and hence had to be upheld “by half-truths, misquotes and unjust insinuations.” Dr. Carl Pritchett, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Anderson, considered desegregation “not a troublesome problem but a period of painful democratic growth.”[211] The Reverend Edward L. Byrd, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Florence, was especially outspoken. The decision of the Supreme Court, he said, was “fundamentally right” and “doubtless legally correct.” Answering those who used the Bible as authority for perpetuation of segregation, he declared that “anyone who seeks shelter in the Bible for his racial prejudice or his defense of segregation is walking on thin ice and takes a position that cannot be soundly defended.” According to the Reverend Byrd “no honest scholar and no honest minister can find grounds for racial segregation in the Bible.” The Reverend Fred V. Poag, pastor of the Shandon Presbyterian Church in Columbia, expressed a similar view: “There is but one position for a Christian. I believe the Church must be open to all regardless of color.”[212]

Clergymen endorsing segregation find it perfectly compatible with the fundamental teachings of Christianity. The Reverend J. M. Lane, pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist Church of Orangeburg, declared, “I think the Bible teaches segregation and I believe it is the best for both races. I feel that the work of the Citizens Councils, without violence and force, is the Christian method of dealing with the move by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to force integration in the public schools.”[213] The Reverend L. B. McCord of Clarendon feared “mongrelization.” “Some people feel that segregation is a sin,” he declared. “That isn’t true. Integration of the races would definitely be sinful.” The Reverend J. J. Patrick, a retired Methodist minister of Ruffin, stated that the South desired segregation “because the best white and colored people believe in God and the Bible.” Writing in the News and Courier, he declared,

We were all living in peace and contentment until that old serpent, the devil, that beguiled Adam and Eve to disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit, led the NAACP to scatter propaganda down here and a few (big heads) were beguiled to follow their teachings....

They [the politicians] with the communists and the NAACP, with some of the socialist preachers, influenced the U. S. Supreme Court Judges to try to nullify the Constitution and force us to consolidate the schools and place our little children in classes with Negro children, contrary to God’s law.