The relationship between blacks and whites continued to be separate and unequal over the years, despite the fact that American society as a whole grew more multicultural. This is suggested by the different approach to the Brown decision in the North, which continued to meet the challenge of racism, while some Southerners mounted “massive resistance” to the court’s decision. Both the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) and the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) encouraged membership to comply with Brown v. Board of Education. (Lewis Powell, an elder in Grace Covenant church, Richmond, Va. — and later a Supreme Court justice — favored integrating the city’s schools and was school board president when integration finally occured in Richmond in 1959.)
Presbyterians in the South faced a challenge made all the more difficult in the face of “massive resistance.” The PCUS had already made a statement on “State Rights and Human Rights” in 1949, alerting its membership to the challenges of racism. Meeting in Montreat, N.C., in 1954, its General Assembly adopted an expansive statement in a report on “Christian Relations” which came out just before the Brown decision was issued. It urged members to study the decision and first put the issue in a larger biblical and theological framework. It re-confessed for our times that God is the sovereign ruler of all creation, and that we are all called upon to “glorify and enjoy” God, the “Ruler of Creation,” as our “chief end.” Moreover, it affirmed that “every person” is of infinite value and is endowed with infinite possibilities because we are all made in the image of God as manifested and reinforced in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, the PCUS Assembly underscored the “oneness” of humankind, “first of all in our creation as human beings.” It confessed that God’s providence governs all people. God’s plan of redemption applied to “all people alike,” and not because of the circumstances of one’s birth.
God, in a word, is no respecter of “persons or nations or races.” The General Assembly also reminded all Christians that in all human relationships love is law and that this is shown supremely in Jesus Christ whose own love focus transcends the “barrier of race.” Moreover the denomination reminded southern Presbyterians that God has the last word on how we treat one another, a time of judgment, a time when there will be no plea of a superior or inferior race. God’s judgment, it warned, is always just as well as merciful.
Taking stock of challenges before Christians, the PCUS General Assembly observed that while we may have different appearances, we are all human beings, all children of a Divine Creator who has made us “restless until we rest” in God. We are called to treat one another according to the law of love. And then in the light of the Supreme Court decision, the GA reviewed its programs. It surveyed progress made to overcome racism in Presbyterian institutions, beginning with church colleges, theological seminaries and state institutions as well. It mentioned other areas of life in which Presbyterians were involved the military, industry, labor, transportation, politics and even in libraries and their policies.
In a survey of public worship, the church found us wanting. It concluded that it was time that we not only take care to integrate our own houses of worship. Going further, it called us to reassert our “status as the conscience of society.” And we had little right to claim that role until we had dealt with the challenge of racism. The PCUS statement reminded its members that we not only live under the law of love and our Christian consciences, but also under the Constitution of the United States of America.
After this soul-searching, the General Assembly focused on some developments which it thought might help members deal with the issue. It called attention to the fact that while we may be designated Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid, scientifically speaking, we are, under God, all one race. No race is superior to another, the General Assembly maintained, making a brief cautionary reference to Adolf Hitler’s ideas of a superior race. We had fought against a superior race ideology in World War II, thus reminding readers of a recent disastrous result of racism.
The Assembly then underscored the fact that the Negro people, held down for so long, had made good use of their many talents and were contributing to the common good. Moreover, African Americans themselves did not wish to marry our daughters, adding another word of reassurance to Southerners about desegregation. Rather, African-Americans wanted equality of opportunity, equal pay for equal work, equal protection of the laws, equality of suffrage, equal recognition of the dignity of the human being, and abolition of public segregation.
In this way the PCUS commended the Supreme Court decision. It urged members to consider it “thoughtfully and prayerfully,” and to comply with the decision by rising above the racial prejudice of the ages. The PCUS did, unfortunately, refer to what it called patterns of “voluntary separation” and “voluntary intermingling.” We could still pick our own friends as we wanted and did not have to fear widespread intermarriage, thus touching the nerve of Caucasian anxiety.
The June 1955 PCUS General Assembly met in Richmond, Va., a center of “massive resistance.” The court decision was very much on the minds of commissioners who gathered at Grace Covenant church. The body reviewed and rejected recommendations, respectfully, to do away with the Division of Christian Relations and continued to support “Negro Work” as it was called.
The Synod of Mississippi spoke out against desegregation. It reminded Presbyterians that “all synods or councils since the days of the Apostles may and have erred,” that they should handle only ecclesiastical matters, and that they were not to “intermeddle with civil affairs.” It underscored the “spirituality” of the church. The General Assembly should follow in Christ’s footsteps. Christ urged us to preach the gospel, transform human nature, and in this way help to solve social, economic and political problems. This synod’s reaction indicated the deep-seated resistance of much, but not all, of the South to desegregation. The 1955 Assembly rejected the Mississippi Synod appeal and other attempts to reverse the 1954 Assembly’s statements on race. The rebuff of these efforts was by a larger margin than approved the 1954 statements.
The conflict, of course, was not over.
During “massive resistance,” the debate shifted to lower judicatories and congregations. Ernest Trice Thompson of Union Seminary in Virginia was a key figure on the Christian Relations Committee, and Benjamin Lacy Rose supported desegregation with his book, Segregation and the Church (1957). Under editor Aubrey Brown, The Presbyterian Outlook continued to champion the cause throughout the church. However, efforts to reunite the Presbyterian churches nationally faltered.
Fifty years have passed since Brown v. Board of Education. It was, in fact, an reminder of the Fifteenth Amendment of our constitution which forbade the denial or abridgment of citizens rights on “account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude” enacted after the Civil War. At last, the Court ordered compliance with that amendment in the 1950s. The Brown decision did not end segregated schools or neighborhoods, due in part to “white flight.” It did help bring down the walls of legally sanctioned segregation in the workplace, voting booth, politics, parks and other places of public accommodation.
When the 216th General Assembly meets in Richmond, we may wish to remember Brown’s wider implications and what it is we may contribute now to this land of the free, now the home of all races of the earth. We may wish to consider also whether our public and private schools are preparing citizens who will be able to deal with the even more multi-colored and multi-cultured nation and world in which we live.
See also Andrew Murray, Presbyterians and the Negro A History (1966) and Joel Alvis, Race & Religion, Southern Presbyterians, 1946-1983 (1994).
James H. Smylie is professor emeritus of church history at Union-PSCE
