Gayraud Wilmore interviewed by J. Oscar McCloud, 1982.

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    I'm Oscar McCloud. Today is May 20th
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    1982.
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    I'm continuing the interview
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    with Dr. Gayraud Wilmore.
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    Gay, when we concluded our
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    earlier interview we were talking about some of the involvements of the United
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    Presbyterian Church specifically then the Board of Christian Education in the
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    whole racial justice scene in the south.
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    Can you comment on what you recall as being the most specific
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    and maybe the most significant involvement in the southeast on the
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    part of the Commission on Religion and Race back in the mid 1960s.
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    Yes, I think the Hattiesburg ministers project was the most
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    specific and perhaps the most meaningful thing the United Presbyterian
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    Church did in relationship to the struggle in the south of that
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    period. It was done in Mississippi,
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    was done in collaboration
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    with the National Council of Churches Mississippi Summer which
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    Bob Spike headed up. It happened in the period
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    1964-65
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    and I think probably was at its height in 1965.
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    Essentially it was a staging area,
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    as one might speak of it,
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    in the little town of Hattiesburg which provide dormitory
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    space and office space for the United Presbyterian
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    ministers who came into that city for the purpose
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    of being involved in COFO,
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    the Council of Federated Organizations,
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    which was headed up by Bob Moses
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    and James Forman. That's when we first met Jim Forman.
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    COFO combined SNCC,
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    the Northern Student Movement, and two or three other movements including the SCLC in
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    a voter registration drive
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    and Freedom Schools in the Hattiesburg area.
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    White Presbyterian ministers came from all over the country.
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    It was a very difficult period because a number of the younger
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    ministers were leaving their congregations without having gotten permissions
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    from their sessions to do so.
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    And I remember getting telephone calls from ministers' wives saying,
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    "My husband left with his suitcase two days ago,
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    we haven't heard from him. He said he was going to Mississippi to join you.
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    Will you please get me some word about how he is?
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    We're worried to death." Or a clerk of session would call
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    and say, "We voted for our minister not to go
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    but he went anyway and people are very upset here in this little church somewhere in Pennsylvania
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    or Ohio. What's going on?" And
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    it was really a very very difficult period in terms of that kind
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    of excitement on the part of some of the younger white clergy.
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    Well they came. They stayed in a dormitory that we had arranged for
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    them, we had rented on the main street in Hattiesburg about a block
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    away from SNCC headquarters.
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    They picketed the courthouse.
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    They taught in Freedom Schools.
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    They met in the black churches
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    with ministers and lay people to talk about the possibility
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    of registering and voting.
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    I think some of them may have done a little instruction on how one should register
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    and vote because we got that kind of instruction ourselves from
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    SNCC workers.
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    About eight of them were arrested. Do you remember that?
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    And they went to trial.
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    The case went to court, and I think was thrown out
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    about two, three years later.
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    I remember the day they went to they were arrested.
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    I was supposed to stay out of jail that day in order to secure some legal
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    assistance. But I saw them taken away.
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    Bob Stone figured very prominently in that whole
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    development because he helped to set up the project
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    and bring on a staff person who
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    lived in the field for almost a year.
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    That's the man whose name we haven't been able to remember,
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    Bob somebody.
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    In any case, this white minister from I think Illinois
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    came down and I met him in New Orleans.
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    We flew up together. I briefed him
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    and Stone did, and he
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    and his family moved into this property
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    that we had rented and maintained the dormitory
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    and the program there on a daily basis for almost a year.
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    I cannot think of his name. That was significant because
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    I counted one time how many Presbyterian ministers came through there
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    and I think it was about 400. Really? Yeah.
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    From all over the country? From all over the country,
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    for periods from a week to three weeks.
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    Most of them for a period of maybe two weeks they would come down
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    and we would give them a daily assignment they would go to this church
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    or go to that freedom school
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    or they would work with a cadre of young people from SNCC
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    and picketing the courthouse
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    and they entered. They were briefed when they first came you know
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    and then debriefed before they left.
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    I thought it was significant because it was an on the field experience
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    for Presbyterian ministers who were talking about this
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    racial crisis from their pulpits without any personal experience of what it was
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    like, and this gave them that kind of personal background
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    and experience. Many of them went on to become very
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    prominent in the struggle in their own communities.
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    Some others got into difficulty
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    with their congregations and had to give up their pulpits.
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    John Coventry Smith- That story needs to be told,
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    you know. We need do more research on who those people were
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    and what happened to them when they got back.
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    John Coventry Smith who is the general secretary of the Commission on Ecumenical Mission
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    Relations at that time, and writing in the manuscript that he's written about
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    some of his experiences talks about ten days
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    or two weeks in Hattiesburg. Would that have been in this project you think?
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    That was in that project and you remind me of the fact that a number
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    of returning missionaries participated in the project.
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    Men and women who were, men who were on furlough were sent down
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    to Hattiesburg and one of the reasons John wanted to do that was
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    that some of his people coming back for a furlough were already down there
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    or were being asked to go.
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    Gay, this was this was not a march per se not
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    in the sense of the major marches we remember
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    but it was certainly part of that whole scene in the south.
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    You must have participated in a number of the marches.
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    Do you have any vivid memories about any of those marches that you participated
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    in in Mississippi or Alabama?
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    I recall participating in the Selma march,
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    I was in the march from Memphis to
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    Jackson, Mississippi,
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    the so-called Meredith March,
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    and some of the smaller marches that happened in Mississippi,
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    like in McComb and Hattiesburg
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    and so forth.
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    Presbyterian ministers came to those marches.
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    They registered with us when they got there.
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    We knew that they were there.
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    We maintained a fairly low profile as far as
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    the marches were concerned.
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    I think Andy Young knew we were there
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    and was sort of our contact person
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    but our people were never in the limelight so
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    to speak. We weren't at the head of the margins.
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    Nor did we participate in the evening meetings.
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    I did on one or two occasions with Dr.
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    King and the cadre of SCLC leaders that
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    met with him in the evening.
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    But for the most part, Presbyterian ministers
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    and lay people, but mostly ministers, who participated in those marches were not
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    conspicuous by their presence.
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    I recall the Selma March,
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    Andrew Young coming to me, I reminded Andy of this since,
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    asking me to look out for his wife because he had to be up there
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    with Dr. King. And I looked out for her.
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    We walked together for quite a few miles
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    and I reminded him of that when
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    he came to Rochester a few years ago.
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    I said, "You trusted me with your wife at all those marches." He said,
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    "Well I knew I could trust you, I couldn't trust some of those other people." Which was funny to me.
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    But the marches were an
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    important part of that whole drive in the south
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    because it provided camaraderie
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    and a sense of community, people got to know one another.
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    I think it was a very important part of that whole experience.
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    You mentioned the Memphis to Jackson March which,
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    as I remember,
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    was the time in which black power was first
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    articulated.
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    And soon thereafter it was to be,
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    a year or so a couple years after,
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    it was to be the riots in the urban cities.
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    We may have touched upon this before
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    but did the riots in Newark
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    and Detroit and other places,
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    did they come as a surprise to persons like yourself who were intimately involved
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    in racial justice work?
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    No they didn't really come as a surprise to me.
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    I felt the tension mounting year after year after 1963,
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    64, 65, 66,
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    one could feel the tension mounting.
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    The summers were periods of great tension
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    and desperation on the part of black people living in the ghetto.
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    It was hot. When they talk about a long hot summer I think they're talking about climate as
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    well as tempers.
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    And it was inevitable that it should explode.
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    Plus the fact that there were a number of radical organizations that were moving
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    in the black community at that time.
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    RAM, Revolutionary Action Movement,
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    the Republic of New Africa,
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    US from California under Ron Karenga,
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    Muslims of course were going strong.
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    So there were various radical
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    sectarian and cultic
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    movements going around in the ghetto that
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    kept the pot boiling so to speak
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    and were right for,
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    made things right for that kind of revolutionary action.
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    I might say, Oscar, that I think the Presbyterian Church played a
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    fairly important role in some of the
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    city riots in the sense that we were on the scene.
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    And helped in Detroit and at Watts
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    and in Newark to
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    develop the food distribution centers,
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    mobilize some of our clergy, and got them tied into the
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    local clergy who were trying to do something about the food distribution
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    question more than anything else. That was really a critical matter.
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    So I was on the scene in Newark,
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    ducking some bullets in a
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    telephone booth outside of that housing project they were doing a lot of shooting in.
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    And I was at Watts when some of our lay people
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    and other denominational people put up a barricade
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    against the motorcycle, what was the name of that motorcycle gang in LA?
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    Yeah, Hells Angels? Hells Angels, yeah,
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    who were going to come into the community
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    and shoot it up.
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    Some of us got out and put up a barricade
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    and the women were bringing coffee all night.
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    I was right in that and being there was a kind of a symbol of the presence
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    of the United Presbyterian Church in that situation.
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    We may have only had one or two ministers that we could call on to participate
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    but the leadership knew that the National Presbyterian Church was concerned
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    and had its own person there who not only represented
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    the denomination but also had some resources to make available,
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    to-
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    Gay, in the midst, in the midst of the stuff in the urban centers
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    and in the south,
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    were there, was there a particular time when you
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    were more fearful for your own safety
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    and welfare than any other?
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    I think I was more fearful in the South than I was anywhere,
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    because I came out of the ghetto of the
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    north and I knew how to operate
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    in those situations. I was not really familiar
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    with Mississippi and Georgia
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    and Alabama. I felt a little uneasy there,
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    especially when I discovered that
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    in Hattiesburg for example there was a determined effort
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    on the part of the whites to break up the ministers project.
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    And I remember having to get out of town,
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    chased, practically chased out of town by some whites in a pick up truck
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    who were driving around our headquarters all the time
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    and just looking for opportunities to make trouble
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    with some of the ministers who were coming in and out,
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    going in and out of that project.
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    That was a little frightening and I think my wife was more concerned about me at that time than at any other time.
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    But in Watts and Detroit, I felt that I was on my own turf,
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    being a northerner, and I knew how to move and get around in
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    those situations much better than in the rural areas of the South.
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    Gay, let me a return to the work of the Commission
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    and subsequently the Council on Church
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    and Race. One of the important things that the
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    Commission and the Council did in the life of the United Presbyterian Church itself was
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    a study it did in around 1967-68
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    on the employment practices of the United Presbyterian Church's agencies.
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    Do you have any memories about that study
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    and its impact on the denomination?
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    What's the name of the man from Detroit? Walter Green.
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    Walter Green.
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    The thing that comes to my mind immediately about that study
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    was the difficulty Walter Green had
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    in trying to superimpose upon
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    a religious institution the norms
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    and standards that were applicable to secular institutions.
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    He had high level expertise in
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    planning for a non-discriminatory policy
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    and practices within secular institutions.
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    He knew the language,
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    he knew the history of that whole development,
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    he knew the legal ramifications of it.
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    And he tried without too many adjustments,
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    which I thought were necessary,
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    to superimpose that upon the United Presbyterian Church.
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    I had to go along with it and I went along
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    with it, you know, enthusiastically,
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    but with a sense of the
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    difficulty we would have when it got right down to the bottom line
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    in meeting the expectations that Walter had.
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    And I think I proved to be, that proved to be right.
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    That he was never quite able to bring it off in the way he
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    saw it and envisioned it in his head.
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    It never quite worked that way. Now after Francis came in
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    and we had an office,
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    I'm not, you know, I don't know what happened.
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    I don't know how much transfer there was,
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    do you? Between that earlier experience
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    and with Francis.
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    I think there were significant connections in that they- What was the last name?
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    Hollis. Hollis. The EEO policy of the denomination
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    really had its beginning in that.
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    Do you remember the reaction of the general secretaries to
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    the findings that resulted in that study?
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    Hmm, that's an interesting question.
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    The employment practices of these major agencies was
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    not a very positive thing, as I recall.
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    I really don't remember in any detail what their reactions were except
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    to say that all of them respected,
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    what was his name? Walter. Walter
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    and recognized the
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    legitimacy of what he was trying to do
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    and recognized also the very nice package that he had
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    arranged. Everything made sense
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    and they sort of gave it lip service because of that.
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    But there was no sign that they were willing to make any
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    kind of drastic changes in employment policy because of this. because
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    he could never really get his hands on,
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    you know, the problem and bring a solution to it.
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    It meant that nobody was threatened by it,
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    it was just something that we had on paper,
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    that looked good, that one acknowledged,
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    but did not really have to worry about upsetting the status
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    quo. About the same time,
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    the Council on Church and Race was also involved in work that resulted in
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    the establishment of PEDCO. Do you remember,
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    do you remember what was behind PEDCO's coming into existence?
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    I remember Brian George warning us,
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    and his warning I think was
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    appropriate, that things were changing
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    in the church and in the society
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    with respect to the whole struggle for
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    civil rights and that we needed some kind of agency that was going to carry
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    over after CORAR
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    or COCAR, was it COCAR at that time?
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    COCAR. After COCAR had gone out of existence,
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    and I think he was wise about that,
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    that the economic development corporation seemed to be that kind
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    of agency that could pick up where we left off
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    and carry on in an area that was most strategic because
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    it had to do with economic development of black communities.
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    Brian did a lot of that work, he and Edler. By that time,
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    COCAR had become a rather complex
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    institution and we were beginning to farm out
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    things to various staff persons in the boards
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    and agencies who were sort of working for us
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    or along side of us or in conjunction
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    with us without actually being under our direction.
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    And I think it may be stretching matters just a little bit to speak of PEDCO as
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    a creature of COCAR. I think it was more a creature of the Board of National Missions.
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    I think it came out of discussions that originated in our outfit.
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    But it was strongly supported
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    and implemented I think by Brian
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    and other people in the Board of National Missions.
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    In that some of that same period,
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    as I recall, there was something called the
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    racial justice staff of the,
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    expanded racial justice staff where there was an attempt to have people
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    from working
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    with the core racial justice staff who came from all of these boards
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    and agencies. Do you recall what was
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    the purpose of that, what were you attempting to accomplish by getting
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    this larger group of staff people gathered as an expanded racial
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    justice staff?
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    Well, you know, it was always said that concern for racial
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    justice ought not to be lodged in a single
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    agency, that it was everybody's business.
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    COCAR used to get the same kind of criticism that social education
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    and action used to get an earlier period.
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    That by being a singular,
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    specific kind of instrumentality for reaching certain goals
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    in a certain field,
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    it eliminated the possibility of other people feeling that they also
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    had a commitment or at least some responsibility in this area.
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    So we were always looking for opportunities to try
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    to open up our operations so that other people could take
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    a share of it. And I think that expanded staff was one
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    step in that direction, to say to the Board of National Missions staff,
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    the Board of Christian Education,
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    that all of us have a responsibility in this crisis in the nation,
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    which is really what it was,
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    to do some, to take on some staff work in response
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    to this crisis.
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    And so that you had a number of people who were very enthusiastic
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    about that because they were kind of bored
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    with what they were doing anyway.
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    And this gave them an opportunity to be involved in something that they felt was really on the cutting edge
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    of what was going on in the world at the time.
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    I'd like to change the subject a little bit
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    or the direction and ask you,
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    we've been talking about a period that was in the latter part of the 1960s.
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    Martin Luther King having been assassinated
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    and then a year later the churches
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    were to be faced with a kind of a confrontation
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    by Jim Forman.
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    What do you remember about that encounter that happened both generally
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    with Jim Forman and the churches, as well as specifically
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    with the United Presbyterian Church? Yes.
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    A key agency in that whole development was IFCO,
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    and here again Brian George I think is a very key person to talk to.
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    IFCO was the Interreligious- Foundation for Community Organization
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    whose director was Lucius Walker, a Baptist minister.
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    IFCO was dominated
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    in 1969 by
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    black members of its board of directors.
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    It started out, as you recall,
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    as an inter-agency board.
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    It was interracial but it also represented a number
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    of the funding agencies.
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    But more
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    and more it also began to represent the
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    agencies that were being funded.
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    And I think at a certain point
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    the political balance of power rested
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    with those who were being funded rather than those who were funding.
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    And at that point,
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    the IFCO board began to be more radical in terms of its
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    expectations.
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    And one of the things that it expected to do was to have a Black Economic Development
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    Conference in Detroit at Wayne State University in April 1969
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    which Lucius Walker determined would be open ended enough
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    so that grassroots people,
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    the kind of people who are increasingly being dominant in IFCO,
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    would have an opportunity to decide the future of the organization,
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    of the whole movement.
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    That is to say the movement of grass roots,
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    ghetto organizations, self-determination organizations.
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    Well when we got to Wayne State University,
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    the thing that I remember more than anything else was that Forman came to
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    me with the manifesto and talked to me about it
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    and said this is what he was going to do the next day.
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    I asked him if he had talked with other clergy
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    and he had but I don't remember who else he talked to.
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    I don't think I saw a document.
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    I just talked to him about it
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    and I was not aware of full implications of what he was talking
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    about. I said, yeah, why don't you do it, you know, that kind of thing.
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    My attitude was that
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    this might be something that would be worth while.
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    I didn't realize that he was gonna steamroll this thing through IFCO
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    and that there would be a real confrontation
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    with the people who were representing various organizations around
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    the country. As you recall, there was a confrontation,
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    and in a sense,
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    Jim Forman took over that meeting.
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    Were you there? He took over the meeting
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    and may have falsified the vote,
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    there could have been some manipulation there of the vote.
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    In any case, the manifesto
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    was reluctantly adopted by the Black
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    Economic Development Conference
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    and we came away from Detroit realizing that we
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    had a whole new ball game on our hands.
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    In a sense, from that point on we were carried
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    along by the momentum of events rather than deciding
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    what the events would be ourselves.
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    When you left Detroit did you have any idea as to what was going to happen the next
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    couple, two or three months? No, I was not aware of what was
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    going to happen in terms of the confrontation at Riverside Church which happened just a few days later.
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    And then the confrontation in Philadelphia,
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    remember that? And the liberating of the typewriter by
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    Muhammad Kenyatta and all of that kind of stuff.
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    Not to mention things that even happened overseas because in England,
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    the World Council of Churches was confronted during that period.
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    So from April to December all hell broke loose.
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    And I don't think any of us, I don't think Forman himself anticipated
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    how that thing was to skyrocket
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    coming out of the April meeting of the Black Economic Development Conference.
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    But as I said,
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    many of us were caught up in the momentum of the thing at that point,
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    and we recognized that churches were guilty.
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    No question about that.
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    We might have made other kinds of choices
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    about how the churches ought to be confronted
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    with the demands of the manifesto.
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    The preamble, which was a wild,
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    Marxist oriented document,
  • speaker
    I think, helped,
  • speaker
    er, hurt the situation more than helped.
  • speaker
    If I had had anything to do with it I would not have started it out that way,
  • speaker
    to get to Chicago so to speak.
  • speaker
    But all in all I think its
  • speaker
    effect was good. I think it made the church recognize
  • speaker
    the radical nature of the
  • speaker
    situation in terms of black people,
  • speaker
    how they felt about discrimination,
  • speaker
    racism in the church.
  • speaker
    It also helped the church to bypass a lot
  • speaker
    of red tape that had constantly been in the way
  • speaker
    of implementation of policies that had been decided
  • speaker
    upon with good will
  • speaker
    but never really actualized because of all kinds of bureaucratic
  • speaker
    snarls.
  • speaker
    The General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church's meeting that year in 1979
  • speaker
    San Antonio- 69.
  • speaker
    69, I mean. And the general council spent a lot of time in debate around that,
  • speaker
    and you were at some point brought into that.
  • speaker
    Why was it,
  • speaker
    why was it so difficult for a church that,
  • speaker
    whose leadership previously had been out in the forefront,
  • speaker
    now to find it so difficult to respond six years later?
  • speaker
    Well, one of the reasons it had some difficulty responding was
  • speaker
    that while these discussions were going on the offices of the
  • speaker
    United Presbyterian Church were being occupied back at 475 Riverside Drive.
  • speaker
    And the National Council of Churches,
  • speaker
    at that point, was debating whether to have an injunction
  • speaker
    against the people who are occupying the offices
  • speaker
    and so forth. In other words I think there was some,
  • speaker
    you know, there was a coersion,
  • speaker
    there was a, you know, back against the wall kind of a situation
  • speaker
    there that made it very difficult for people to
  • speaker
    concede anything without feeling that they were being,
  • speaker
    they were doing it at the point of a gun.
  • speaker
    Did I ever tell you about
  • speaker
    the young guerrillas who occupied my hotel suite during that period?
  • speaker
    I haven't said very much about that but I have an article that I sent to Black Scholar
  • speaker
    that has not yet been published in which I relate something
  • speaker
    I don't think very many people know, but I thought you may have known about it,
  • speaker
    Oscar. Are these the ones who brought, who had the guns? Yeah.
  • speaker
    They brought them from Cuba or something? Yes, you knew about that then?
  • speaker
    Yeah, I'd heard about it. You told me about it. Did I? Yeah, when you said guerrillas,
  • speaker
    that's why, yeah.
  • speaker
    Urban guerrillas.
  • speaker
    And as I think about that now, you know I can go into a cold sweat because those
  • speaker
    people were talking about going up into the balcony
  • speaker
    and putting the guns,
  • speaker
    turing the guns on the General Assembly.
  • speaker
    And I had two or three long conversations
  • speaker
    with them over a period of about two
  • speaker
    or three days in which I tried to
  • speaker
    talk them out of doing anything preposterous,
  • speaker
    ridiculous in that situation. Now were,
  • speaker
    but I, one never got the feeling that that's where Jim Forman was,
  • speaker
    though. I mean, was, I mean- They were Forman's people,
  • speaker
    some of them were Forman's people.
  • speaker
    They were brought to San Antonio by a communique
  • speaker
    that went out from James Forman.
  • speaker
    That he was going to be there, yeah. Yes, but many of them were not under his authority.
  • speaker
    Yeah. They belonged to other kinds of revolutionary groups at work.
  • speaker
    Now I say that because I always got the impression that Jim Forman was
  • speaker
    very much on the nonviolent,
  • speaker
    in so many ways, was on the nonviolent side.
  • speaker
    Well, not really. He said he would not back away
  • speaker
    from violence if it became necessary,
  • speaker
    but he did not want it.
  • speaker
    That's almost a quote from the manifesto
  • speaker
    itself. He would prefer not to have violence,
  • speaker
    but if pushed to the wall he would,
  • speaker
    he would not back away from it.
  • speaker
    That's what he said.
  • speaker
    No, I think these people belonged to a little offshoot
  • speaker
    or radical offshoot of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
  • speaker
    that was being courted by Castro
  • speaker
    and by the Cuban Revolution at the time.
  • speaker
    Where they got those guns, I don't know,
  • speaker
    but those guns were under my bed,
  • speaker
    packed down in creolin
  • speaker
    or whatever they call that stuff you pack down new weapons in.
  • speaker
    And they opened it up and showed 'em to me.
  • speaker
    In San Antonio, Texas. I'm sure the FBI must know something about this.
  • speaker
    I can't imagine that they were not aware of the fact that
  • speaker
    some of these people were in San Antonio at the time
  • speaker
    and that they had transported some guns there.
  • speaker
    Well I have never been visited by the FBI about it.
  • speaker
    I don't know anybody else who was.
  • speaker
    Looking back on that period, how do you feel about the way in
  • speaker
    which the United Presbyterian Church eventually
  • speaker
    responded to the initiatives of Forman?
  • speaker
    I feel fairly positive about our Church's
  • speaker
    response. I think a part of our response was
  • speaker
    the program for the self development of people,
  • speaker
    which I think was a good program and made a fine contribution
  • speaker
    outside the country as well as within.
  • speaker
    I think, probably, we muffed the ball.
  • speaker
    I'm sure we did. And I've said this in my introduction to that period
  • speaker
    and documented a history on black theology which I did
  • speaker
    with Cone. I think that the NCBC
  • speaker
    and the caucuses are more responsible for the
  • speaker
    foul ups than the churches were.
  • speaker
    We had leadership reins in our hands,
  • speaker
    to some extent. We could have delivered more
  • speaker
    and we could have done it better,
  • speaker
    you know, if we had performed a little differently than we did.
  • speaker
    Some mistakes were made.
  • speaker
    But I feel fairly positive, I think church did about as much as could be expected
  • speaker
    under the circumstances.
  • speaker
    Since we were talking about one period which for many people in the church was a very disturbing
  • speaker
    period, let's go on and talk about another one, a couple of years
  • speaker
    later: the uproar over the
  • speaker
    COCAR grant for the defense of Angela Davis.
  • speaker
    There, I feel, our performance was not nearly as
  • speaker
    commendable as it may have been in 1969.
  • speaker
    I think our church reacted hysterically to
  • speaker
    the situation having to do
  • speaker
    with Angela Davis.
  • speaker
    I think there was enough evidence abroad that
  • speaker
    there was some question of whether she could get a fair trial that
  • speaker
    intelligent people could make a contribution to her defense
  • speaker
    without being apologetic about.
  • speaker
    And I think our church overreacted.
  • speaker
    And I think the black constituency of the church demonstrated
  • speaker
    that by raising the money
  • speaker
    and and making it available to Angela
  • speaker
    Davis, quite apart from the attitude that was
  • speaker
    abroad in the church.
  • speaker
    I was a little surprised and the reaction of the Stated Clerk
  • speaker
    and the heads of the boards of that period,
  • speaker
    they seemed to be terribly upset about it.
  • speaker
    I didn't think they were going to be as upset as they were.
  • speaker
    I thought they would say well if that's what the blacks want to do,
  • speaker
    let them do it. But it really embarrassed them
  • speaker
    and they felt that they had to
  • speaker
    say something or do something that would absolve them from
  • speaker
    the implications of being just mossback
  • speaker
    conservatives in this situation.
  • speaker
    And they did, and I think Edler, as you recall,
  • speaker
    accepted that something of an, it wasn't an apology,
  • speaker
    but how did that happen now.
  • speaker
    There was a meeting, a press conference which seems to
  • speaker
    me the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly clarify
  • speaker
    the position of the church with respect to the action of the black
  • speaker
    Presbyterians.
  • speaker
    I'm trying to think what that clarification was, do you remember anything about that?
  • speaker
    Well it was one of those cases where,
  • speaker
    obviously,
  • speaker
    we weren't at our best because the interpretation of that
  • speaker
    was quickly taken from blacks to interpret what they were doing
  • speaker
    and began to be interpreted by whites.
  • speaker
    And I think a part of the point of what I thought blacks was trying to say was-
  • speaker
    It was lost. It was lost, yeah. I recall that.
  • speaker
    Yeah. The whites took it and interpreted it to their benefit
  • speaker
    and to the benefit of the United Presbyterian Church.
  • speaker
    Right.
  • speaker
    What was it about the leadership in the church that
  • speaker
    caused it to respond
  • speaker
    less effectively
  • speaker
    with the grant to Angela Davis than the confrontation
  • speaker
    with Jim Forman? I think it was the fear of communism.
  • speaker
    I think the communism issue was foremost in the Angela Davis case.
  • speaker
    There was an accusation of communism, or at least Marxism in the Forman thing too.
  • speaker
    And then there was that drastic coercive action
  • speaker
    of taking over services,
  • speaker
    that sort of thing, walking down the aisles of churches.
  • speaker
    But the Forman manifesto was a
  • speaker
    more intellectual statement of
  • speaker
    Marxist principles whereas Angela Davis,
  • speaker
    the Angela Davis affair had to do
  • speaker
    with a confessed, a professed,
  • speaker
    active member of the Communist Party who was strongly supported
  • speaker
    by the American Communist Party. So that,
  • speaker
    so that her organizational base was the Communist Party
  • speaker
    and therefore the church I think recoiled from that
  • speaker
    with more alarm than it did even from the Forman manifesto.
  • speaker
    There are people still around the United Presbyterian Church,
  • speaker
    and some of them in strange places,
  • speaker
    who would periodically refer to to Angela
  • speaker
    Davis.
  • speaker
    Why, 11 years later,
  • speaker
    does anyone have tje need to refer to,
  • speaker
    in terms of the life and mission and ministry of this church,
  • speaker
    why does anyone have the need to refer to Angela Davis?
  • speaker
    Well I think you know as well as I do there is a group of
  • speaker
    Presbyterians who have always believed that
  • speaker
    some of the black leadership of the church was in the
  • speaker
    communist movement.
  • speaker
    They followed Edler Hawkins around, they attacked Edler on that basis,
  • speaker
    and they felt that
  • speaker
    the position that we took on the Angela Davis questioning
  • speaker
    confirmed their suspicions about us.
  • speaker
    So I think we were part of a witch hunt that was going on in that period,
  • speaker
    and the people who wanted to get
  • speaker
    rid of that whole church and race crowd, and those radicals
  • speaker
    who were leading the church down the wrong
  • speaker
    path from 1964 to
  • speaker
    71, the people who wanted to get us really came all
  • speaker
    out on the Angela Davis affair to do that.
  • speaker
    And I guess in some ways they succeeded,
  • speaker
    in a way they broke up the Council on Church
  • speaker
    and Race.
  • speaker
    In the period 1971-72,
  • speaker
    although I did not leave my job for fear of them.
  • speaker
    Well, I wanted to ask you this, I mean I wanted to ask you whether you really believe that that
  • speaker
    was more of a factor in terms of the diminishing
  • speaker
    impact of the council
  • speaker
    or was it really more of what was happening in the society?
  • speaker
    What? Whether the reaction of United Presbyterians
  • speaker
    was the primary factor in terms of the diminishing impact
  • speaker
    of the council,
  • speaker
    or was it the climate
  • speaker
    or what was happening in the society?
  • speaker
    Well I think they were, I don't know if you can separate them.
  • speaker
    I think United Presbyterians were acting in response to what was going on.
  • speaker
    I guess it's a question of which reflects the other.
  • speaker
    Yes. The church is more reflective of society,
  • speaker
    I guess I'm saying, than them an influencer of society.
  • speaker
    I think reactionary forces within the church
  • speaker
    took the initiative in that situation.
  • speaker
    In other words, I don't think the headlines in the newspaper
  • speaker
    or what was going on in the society in general was as
  • speaker
    important in that particular period than
  • speaker
    was the renewal of conservative
  • speaker
    and reactionary forces within the church itself who were now feeling triumphant
  • speaker
    after many years of being eclipsed by Edler
  • speaker
    and all of us who were working in the race front now felt that this was an opportunity
  • speaker
    to get this crowd, and to really rid
  • speaker
    the church once and for all of this kind of [influence?].
  • speaker
    And I think they came down hard on Angela Davis, period.
  • speaker
    I think that period 1972,
  • speaker
    73, 74 which you know more about than I do was a period in which they reigned
  • speaker
    supreme in our church.
  • speaker
    And I cannot imagine that some of the restructuring
  • speaker
    and so forth that happened was not a result of their
  • speaker
    influence in the judicatories at the grassroots level.
  • speaker
    That whole business about calling the church back to the grassroots
  • speaker
    and giving the lay people more of an influence at the presbytery level
  • speaker
    and so forth. I'm sure had something to do
  • speaker
    with the action.
  • speaker
    We had something to do with the church and race program during that period.
  • speaker
    That was a question that I was going to ask you was
  • speaker
    what, what impact did you feel the racial justice
  • speaker
    thrust of the early and mid 60s had on
  • speaker
    the reorganization of the United Presbyterian Church.
  • speaker
    I feel that way because, and I recall talking to some staff people who were my peers,
  • speaker
    or maybe some who were a little below me in terms of staff
  • speaker
    position and getting expressions
  • speaker
    of fear that we might be going too fast,
  • speaker
    or now it was time to retrench,
  • speaker
    withdraw back. We were getting too far ahead of the church
  • speaker
    and the church was you know really unhappy
  • speaker
    and lost because of the radical activity of its staff.
  • speaker
    So that when white peers
  • speaker
    and white colleagues begin to talk that way,
  • speaker
    who have formerly been, you know,
  • speaker
    right alongside of you and wanting to push forward,
  • speaker
    then you know that they are probably
  • speaker
    reflecting something general that's going on in the church.
  • speaker
    Gay, you've spoke of your, of your leaving
  • speaker
    and so forth.
  • speaker
    You had been in theological education before-
Details
Title

Gayraud Wilmore interviewed by J. Oscar McCloud, 1982.

Description

Oral history recorded May 20, 1982 in Rochester, N.Y.

Creator

Wilmore, Gayraud S. (interviewee)
McCloud, J. Oscar (James Oscar), 1936- (interviewer)

Date

1982
May 20, 1982

Type of resource

sound recording-nonmusical

Genre

oral histories
interviews
sound recordings

Form

audiocassettes

Extent

2 audiocassettes (90 min. each) : 1 7/8 ips, mono

Language

English

Subject names

United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Commission on Religion and Race.
Davis, Angela Y. (Angela Yvonne), 1944-
Forman, James, 1928-2005.
National Black Economic Development Conference (1969 : Detroit, Mich.)
Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)

Topics

African Americans--Civil rights.
African American clergy
Segregation in education--United States.
Race relations--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Geographic subjects

United States--Race relations.
North and Central America--United States--New York--Monroe--Rochester

Rights status

Contact repository for more information

Rights status

IN COPYRIGHT; http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Note

Recorded May 20, 1982 in Rochester, N.Y.

Physical location

CASSETTE 858; Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA

Related item

[Interview with] Gayraud S. Wilmore, Jr. [sound recording] / [J. Oscar McCloud].--https://catalog.history.pcusa.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumb...

Identifier (local)

cassette858_side1

PID (Persistent Identifier)

islandora:133227

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