Kenneth G. Neigh interviewed by Susan Miller, 1989-1990, tape 1, side 2.

Primary tabs

Download

  • speaker
    [Susan Miller speaking] This is side two of the oral history with Kenneth Neigh [Neigh, Kenneth Glenn] on December seventh nineteen
  • speaker
    eighty-nine in Princeton Junction. So
  • speaker
    someone came out to talk to your wife about going back to Detroit?
  • speaker
    And, you. I have it you were Executive Presbyter of Detroit as of nineteen
  • speaker
    forty-nine? Is that right? Yeah.
  • speaker
    And then, overlapping with that, you filled that position till nineteen fifty-nine.
  • speaker
    and you were also executive of the Synod of Michigan from fifty one to
  • speaker
    fifty nine. Is that right? I guess so, I don't remember the dates well. And, it seems like wherever I'd go, I'd get mixed up in
  • speaker
    administrative messes.
  • speaker
    There still is a lot of pulling and hauling between big
  • speaker
    city presbyteries and the
  • speaker
    smaller presbyteries in population and was a distinct
  • speaker
    division in Michigan at that time.
  • speaker
    So, it didn't make any sense
  • speaker
    and so we put the synod and the presbytery together.
  • speaker
    We did the same with the Michigan and Detroit Council of Churches,
  • speaker
    and I am told
  • speaker
    that the union is still very strong in between
  • speaker
    our state Presbyterians and Detroit Presbyterians.
  • speaker
    well
  • speaker
    What was Detroit like in the fifties?
  • speaker
    Did you live in Detroit proper or did you live in a suburb? Now, we lived in
  • speaker
    a section of Detroit called the
  • speaker
    North Riverdale Park.
  • speaker
    What was Detroit like?
  • speaker
    if
  • speaker
    It was. Detroit was always in turmoil.
  • speaker
    I said once that
  • speaker
    you could almost tell what was going to happen,
  • speaker
    Industrially and culturally in our country because it happened
  • speaker
    first in Detroit.
  • speaker
    and
  • speaker
    So. Was there racial tension there? Did you see it? The
  • speaker
    first racial tension was in nineteen forty-two. There was a riot out
  • speaker
    on Belle Isle,
  • speaker
    which is a
  • speaker
    park
  • speaker
    kind of a island. And, there were black
  • speaker
    soldiers around Detroit. And
  • speaker
    white soldiers and black soldiers got into a fight.
  • speaker
    I remember.
  • speaker
    Forty-two, of course, is when we were still in Allen Park.
  • speaker
    and I remember going down
  • speaker
    to the office.
  • speaker
    In the center of Detroit was a place called Grand Circus Park.
  • speaker
    And all of a sudden I was engulfed by
  • speaker
    a crowd of high school students, men and
  • speaker
    they saw a black guy. And, I
  • speaker
    never will forget. One of them got his head between his knees. I mean
  • speaker
    got the black guy's head between this guy's knees
  • speaker
    and they pummelled him.
  • speaker
    A guy who ran a Jewish clothing store
  • speaker
    and I finally got him out. It was a
  • speaker
    it was a bad, bad situation.
  • speaker
    And of course I was there during the organization of the
  • speaker
    automobile plant Walter Reuther was an old friend.
  • speaker
    And, one of the curious things about it all was that
  • speaker
    the heads of the major automobile plants were all
  • speaker
    Presbyterians.
  • speaker
    What were you? What did you hope to do
  • speaker
    in Detroit when you first got there? Did you have any aspirations of what
  • speaker
    you might do?
  • speaker
    In
  • speaker
    taking the position that you took?
  • speaker
    Well
  • speaker
    yes. there was the
  • speaker
    historic division between the
  • speaker
    inner city pastors and the
  • speaker
    suburban pastors.
  • speaker
    And the
  • speaker
    climate was unhealthy.
  • speaker
    I. I had been on the, of course, on a number of
  • speaker
    committees before I left and knew
  • speaker
    where all the administrative and
  • speaker
    spiritual weaknesses were.
  • speaker
    and we plotted a lot of things together.
  • speaker
    One of the important things that had to be done was to
  • speaker
    raise the level of giving to the
  • speaker
    work of the national church.
  • speaker
    That happened relatively quickly because.
  • speaker
    This is Machiavellian. But, I would I would
  • speaker
    play one of these big suburban pastors off against the
  • speaker
    other in terms of their
  • speaker
    their benevolence giving. And, that is sort of
  • speaker
    mean to do.
  • speaker
    Uh.
  • speaker
    How do you think the responsibility of an executive presbyter
  • speaker
    have changed since the time
  • speaker
    you were there and you will
  • speaker
    filling that type of position?
  • speaker
    I haven't the vaguest idea. There are some world events
  • speaker
    going on. I just want to bring them up and see if they had any impact
  • speaker
    on you at the time? The Korean War was from nineteen
  • speaker
    fifty to fifty-three. And also, in that time, the
  • speaker
    McCarthyism was going on. Did these things
  • speaker
    give you any problems in
  • speaker
    terms of the role you were trying to play within the Presbyterian Church? Oh, you haven't heard I am a well known Communist.
  • speaker
    Oh, are you? Ah, yes. The
  • speaker
    Korean War, of course,
  • speaker
    thanks to the years of
  • speaker
    touched us only as it touched
  • speaker
    the majority of people in our society.
  • speaker
    The McCarthy thing was a different thing entirely.
  • speaker
    I won't
  • speaker
    yeah
  • speaker
    I was before the House Un-American Activities Committee. I didn't realize that.
  • speaker
    uh
  • speaker
    uh
  • speaker
    I still can't get my files
  • speaker
    under the Freedom of Information Act.
  • speaker
    It had to do with the
  • speaker
    a
  • speaker
    guy who was the
  • speaker
    director of one of our
  • speaker
    neighborhood houses. And, he
  • speaker
    had been a member of a Communist
  • speaker
    cell in Chicago. And he was a graduate of Union Seminary
  • speaker
    and
  • speaker
    he was hauled in. In addition to which,
  • speaker
    one of the first things I learned was that everybody isn't going to
  • speaker
    like you. One of the people that didn't like me
  • speaker
    was a Presbyterian
  • speaker
    from Lansing, who was on the House Un-American
  • speaker
    Activities Committee.
  • speaker
    So we had quite a deal over that.
  • speaker
    How long did it go on?
  • speaker
    Oh
  • speaker
    a couple years, I guess. Something like that.
  • speaker
    So you can't get your file? The House Un-American Activities Committee, no
  • speaker
    one can get them until fifty years.
  • speaker
    The F.B.I., the CIA files
  • speaker
    under the Freedom of Information Act, I
  • speaker
    got from the F.B.I. a file on a speech that I
  • speaker
    made out in Phoenix to the National Councilof Churches, in which
  • speaker
    I accused the, and it was the truth, the
  • speaker
    F.B.I. of having a plant in my office. And, it created. Now
  • speaker
    That's one part. And, that ain't much!
  • speaker
    Right. And, the other was a C I A file
  • speaker
    had to do with a letter
  • speaker
    that I had written and a reply I had received from
  • speaker
    a friend in Russia. And you
  • speaker
    know I went back and forth from Cuba and all that kind of thing,
  • speaker
    and I know that there are more stuff out there. Yeah.
  • speaker
    But, that's what they were telling you.
  • speaker
    Civil Rights issues and the Civil Rights Act
  • speaker
    passed in nineteen fifty-seven.
  • speaker
    I know later on the Board of
  • speaker
    National Missions, or the Committee on Church and Race, did
  • speaker
    these events in Detroit in urban city and seeing civil rights being played out,
  • speaker
    did that have a big impact
  • speaker
    on you? Well, it was. As I stated
  • speaker
    earlier, it started back in
  • speaker
    Lisbon, Ohio. So, it was a. I was about to say a
  • speaker
    progressive thing, but it wasn't
  • speaker
    exactly that. it was responding to the events of a
  • speaker
    particular hour.
  • speaker
    OK. There's a couple of events in the church. Nineteen
  • speaker
    fifty-six women were allowed to be ordained. Do you
  • speaker
    remember this? What was your reaction to it?
  • speaker
    My reaction? I guess you could say that I had some leadership in the
  • speaker
    fight in Michigan.
  • speaker
    I never will forget the vote in Detroit Presbytery. We had the
  • speaker
    minister of First Church [Frew, Allan Maclachlan] was a. He was born in Scotland. And, he
  • speaker
    was brought over when he was about two years old, but he had the longest
  • speaker
    Scottish brogue that you ever heard. He made an
  • speaker
    impassioned speech against it to the presbytery meeting.
  • speaker
    Did it, did it split the church in the area? No. It didn't. It wasn't that strong.
  • speaker
    and then in nineteen fifty-eight, it was the merger of the PCUSA and
  • speaker
    the United Presbyterian Church of North America. The emphasis,
  • speaker
    according to the history books was an emphasis throughout the
  • speaker
    fifties. Church union, yeah. Did you do
  • speaker
    did you play any role in this, in the merger? I was on a commission.
  • speaker
    You were on a commission. Again, I was chairman of the Christian
  • speaker
    Education Committee. Then, at the
  • speaker
    end, there were two or three odds and ends that, hadn't
  • speaker
    been taken care of and
  • speaker
    three of us were appointed to do that. And, had I known at the time
  • speaker
    that I was going to be the General Secretary of the Board of National
  • speaker
    Missions, I would have voted differently because three of us:
  • speaker
    one I had to do with evangelism. And it was put in the Board of National Missions.
  • speaker
    And one had to do with the
  • speaker
    Caribbean. And, this is how I got mixed
  • speaker
    up in Cuba, you see. And,
  • speaker
    radio and television. And, it was put in the Board of National Missions.
  • speaker
    How did you feel about the merger personally? It was, from what
  • speaker
    I understand from other people, kind of a, little bit of a heated issue
  • speaker
    at times? Sure was in Pennsylvania.
  • speaker
    One of
  • speaker
    my close friends was vigorously and vocally against.
  • speaker
    He was the executive of the Synod of Pennsylvania. He used
  • speaker
    to say that United Presbyterians are denser in
  • speaker
    Western Pennsylvania than any place in the world.
  • speaker
    How do you feel about the merger?
  • speaker
    Well
  • speaker
    I had
  • speaker
    See. I developed
  • speaker
    several philosophic tenets along the way. And
  • speaker
    one of them is that you have to have
  • speaker
    union
  • speaker
    de facto before you can have union de jour.
  • speaker
    This is it. I've tried to get that across
  • speaker
    to COCU [Consultation on Church Union] when I was in COCU. And
  • speaker
    COCU has just run its course now, precisely because of that.
  • speaker
    and
  • speaker
    Hal [Fredsell, Harold F., Presbytery Executive] and I felt that it would work in Michigan and in Detroit because we are
  • speaker
    already doing things together. And, it worked in a number of
  • speaker
    places like
  • speaker
    St Louis and a number of metropolitan areas.
  • speaker
    So that Wayne County and
  • speaker
    Detroit Michigan,
  • speaker
    there were no strong feelings at all.
  • speaker
    it
  • speaker
    Then, in nineteen fifty-nine, you were named the General Secretary of the Board of
  • speaker
    National Missions. How did this come about? How did the move come about?
  • speaker
    Well
  • speaker
    Well, we had
  • speaker
    what we call the national staff in National Missions. It was
  • speaker
    made up of headquarters and people
  • speaker
    from the synods and presbyteries. I was active in that.
  • speaker
    I had been the perennial budget chairman, and
  • speaker
    the president and all that kind of stuff. In
  • speaker
    addition to which, Hermann Morse, [Morse, H. N., [Hermann Nelson]] my predecessor, was very
  • speaker
    close and
  • speaker
    he had
  • speaker
    gone to Alma College and had a sister that
  • speaker
    lived in Michigan, used to stay with us.
  • speaker
    uh
  • speaker
    One foregone conclusion because the churches had just united
  • speaker
    and there were considerable
  • speaker
    world of envy in the church for old United Presbyterian to be
  • speaker
    General Secretary of the Board.
  • speaker
    Now, I was thinking about this the other day. I don't
  • speaker
    feel and I think this is probably the truth
  • speaker
    There were four people.
  • speaker
    The Associate General Secretary of the
  • speaker
    of the Board [Rev. Louis H. Evans] , two pastors and I,
  • speaker
    that Hermann got together to talk about
  • speaker
    mission in the sixties.
  • speaker
    What he actually was doing
  • speaker
    was, I
  • speaker
    think, at least trying to discover which one of the four of us
  • speaker
    could handle the future and
  • speaker
    anyway the
  • speaker
    Hermann, and
  • speaker
    he was a cagey old boy, believe me.
  • speaker
    I never did meet with the committee ever. And,
  • speaker
    the only question that anyone ever asked me. This was by the
  • speaker
    president of the Board at the time, Ray Lindquist [Lindquist, Raymond I., pastor First Presbyterian Church, Hollywood, CA]
  • speaker
    He asked me if I had a private income.
  • speaker
    Because salaries were so very low around there.
  • speaker
    I remember they called
  • speaker
    from the Board to my office,
  • speaker
    Ray did.
  • speaker
    I didn't think that I would, you know. I would have liked to stay in Michgan
  • speaker
    because you could see what was happening.
  • speaker
    I was afraid to tell Jane.
  • speaker
    I called her pastor, Harry De Young [De Young, Harry Rine, pastor Redford Presbyterian Church, Detroit]. Harry
  • speaker
    went over and told her.
  • speaker
    Got somebody else to did it.
  • speaker
    Was she unhappy about it? Oh, yes.
  • speaker
    We came near to ending our marriage. Jane was
  • speaker
    always happiest
  • speaker
    about the place she had just left. I know that feeling.
  • speaker
    She. We were still down at one fifty-six Fifth Avenue, she called
  • speaker
    and she said Well I hope you're happy.
  • speaker
    Both of your kids came home crying today.
  • speaker
    ooh.
  • speaker
    Glory, little guilt. Low blow.
  • speaker
    So, you moved then to New York
  • speaker
    City. Did you move in the City? No, no. into Scarsdale. Right, you told me that.
  • speaker
    One thing
  • speaker
    I kept coming across when I was reading some of your articles was that you believed that
  • speaker
    Missions really was getting Presbyterians
  • speaker
    what they believe into what they do. Was this a philosophy
  • speaker
    you carried with you all along? Or was it? And then, you brought it
  • speaker
    with you into the Board of National Missions. Well, you see that started in Allen Park. Because there was so
  • speaker
    much to do there.
  • speaker
    What was your first? The General Secretary job is a big job.
  • speaker
    What do you remember as your first big challenge in that position?
  • speaker
    To stay alive! There were so many. Bill Morrison [Morrison, Willaim A.], my colleague,
  • speaker
    at the Board of Christian Education, once asked me how I kept so many balls
  • speaker
    up in the air at the same time.
  • speaker
    Well, I had to reorganize the staff.
  • speaker
    I had to reorganize out some of my oldest friends. if
  • speaker
    I had to do something about
  • speaker
    The breach between the old United Presbyterians and the old Presbyterians.
  • speaker
    because it was, it was
  • speaker
    a tenacity about traditions, you see, that had to be broken.
  • speaker
    And it, it was a curious thing that, in the later years when
  • speaker
    things got rough, the old U.P.s
  • speaker
    were the ones that always were
  • speaker
    there.
  • speaker
    Well.
  • speaker
    Cuba had broken apart then. And, there were
  • speaker
    so many things. The church was growing so rapidly at that
  • speaker
    period, we had to find ways of financing it. We
  • speaker
    pushed a big deal with New York Life Insurance Company to
  • speaker
    finance church building. and
  • speaker
    I always used to come out in my office and say
  • speaker
    I retired at the right time.
  • speaker
    There was a whole business of closing institutions.
  • speaker
    Institutions that had a part in
  • speaker
    some of the historic development of our
  • speaker
    country, like the
  • speaker
    like
  • speaker
    the Tucson Indian School. And, I got
  • speaker
    I got all the flak for that, you see.
  • speaker
    Well, flak isn't the right
  • speaker
    word really.
  • speaker
    I got expressions of concern
  • speaker
    but every phase of
  • speaker
    the National Missions of the Church was undergoing change.
  • speaker
    I was on the airplane coming back from Atlanta,
  • speaker
    the same flight that Castro's sister was on when she defected.
  • speaker
    Wow!
  • speaker
    Did you know it at the time? I didn't know it at the time,
  • speaker
    but when I
  • speaker
    landed in Mexico City, I found out very quickly, because
  • speaker
    there was a great big group of black-suited
  • speaker
    men to meet her. And, I think, protect her, maybe.
  • speaker
    How much staff did you oversee as the General Secretary?
  • speaker
    Well, it depends upon what you call.
  • speaker
    There again, it has to do with more my
  • speaker
    philosophy of administration.
  • speaker
    I believe that mission is best administered where it is going on.
  • speaker
    and.
  • speaker
    did most of the administration of the Board of National Missions when I was there
  • speaker
    was a collegiate one.
  • speaker
    I tried to get the best people I could find and then let them do their best,
  • speaker
    which was usually pretty good.
  • speaker
    And,
  • speaker
    in terms of numbers, it's, it's
  • speaker
    it's a bit difficult to, because of that kind
  • speaker
    of administration we had, to say. Who was
  • speaker
    responsible. Because it was diversified. Spread out. If you
  • speaker
    want a number, at one time, there were
  • speaker
    somewhere between thirty five hundred and four thousand people
  • speaker
    involved
  • speaker
    in the National Missions enterprise in one way or another, the
  • speaker
    focused in New York.
  • speaker
    In nineteen sixty-three
  • speaker
    the
  • speaker
    Commission on Church and Race was established.
  • speaker
    Did that have.
  • speaker
    It had a direct connection with the Board of National Missions? Well, you could say that we
  • speaker
    started the thing. That's what I thought. The
  • speaker
    group that you just mentioned, the Committee on Church and Race in the Board of
  • speaker
    National Missions was the predecessor of that.
  • speaker
    What was its emphasis?
  • speaker
    Well, obviously race, but beyond that? How did it
  • speaker
    acto on that, I guess? The committee?
  • speaker
    The committee. The Committee. the
  • speaker
    Committee itself
  • speaker
    attempted to point up what the issues were, and what they were going to be.
  • speaker
    and. To get that
  • speaker
    intelligence into the whole National Missions structure.
  • speaker
    That's what the Commission
  • speaker
    Officially that's the way that the
  • speaker
    what we call originally the "Council on Church and Race." I think "Commission," but.
  • speaker
    "commission" could be wrong. No, I guess that is probably right.
  • speaker
    but.
  • speaker
    That's the way that it approach things in the beginning
  • speaker
    to to get. And, one of the curious
  • speaker
    things about it all was that we, except for
  • speaker
    the establishment of the commission itself, the
  • speaker
    journal. We didn't. We any other
  • speaker
    General Assembly actions or any other thing we did because
  • speaker
    years before, the General Assembly had taken actions to
  • speaker
    put floors under these things.
  • speaker
    Some of them were in the early fifties.
  • speaker
    Did you find your connection with the General Assembly a friendly one?
  • speaker
    The constant attempt to get more funding
  • speaker
    I don't know.
  • speaker
    We
  • speaker
    Will you repeat that. Well, I could be way off base.
  • speaker
    No. No. That is , it is germane. Okay. I was just wondering is
  • speaker
    your connections with the General Assembly when
  • speaker
    you spoke to them and gave your reports, was it a friendly atmosphere? Give and take atmosphere?
  • speaker
    Generally, it was two friendly
  • speaker
    until the latter years when the Angela Davis thing came along.
  • speaker
    But, no, I remember we
  • speaker
    got mixed up in community organisation with Saul Alinsky. You read anything about that?
  • speaker
    No. Don't know about that. Well this is this is
  • speaker
    when we organized the whole fight,
  • speaker
    for example, in Rochester to do something about
  • speaker
    COZACK and
  • speaker
    Saul Alinsky was a self-styled radical,
  • speaker
    community organize, whom I had known
  • speaker
    in Chicago. He organised blab back of the yards community,
  • speaker
    which was the first of its kind. And, we
  • speaker
    got. We and the Roman Catholic
  • speaker
    church organized the
  • speaker
    Woodlawn section of Chicago and
  • speaker
    oh, the Twelfth St section in Detroit and that kind of thing.
  • speaker
    And blinking. You know we have a bit more.
  • speaker
    But the
  • speaker
    This
  • speaker
    is in response to the friendly atmosphere.
  • speaker
    I would report to the General Assembly about Saul Alinsky
  • speaker
    and there would be no questions at all.
  • speaker
    and I. As I say. At that point, it was a little too friendly.
  • speaker
    But, in terms of
  • speaker
    the General Assembly office, That's why I
  • speaker
    say it is germane. There
  • speaker
    was a good deal of nationalism between the New
  • speaker
    York offices and Philadelphia offices. And
  • speaker
    I think one of the things that helped was that Blake [Eugene Carson Blake] was
  • speaker
    all up until the time he died, was
  • speaker
    my very close friend. So that
  • speaker
    he was my bridge partner.
  • speaker
    I think that this might be a good
  • speaker
    place to stop.
Details
Title

Kenneth G. Neigh interviewed by Susan Miller, 1989-1990, tape 1, side 2.

Description

Kenneth Neigh, general secretary of the UPCUSA Board of National Missions, interviewed by Susan Miller of the Presbyterian Historical Society.

Creator

Neigh, Kenneth Glenn, 1908-1996. (interviewee)
Miller, Susan, 1963- (interviewer)

Date

1989
December 7, 1989-January 18, 1990

Type of resource

sound recording-nonmusical

Genre

sound recordings
interviews
oral histories

Form

audiocassettes

Extent

3 audiocassettes : analog, 1 7/8 ips

Language

English

Subject names

Neigh, Kenneth Glenn, 1908-1996.

Geographic subjects

Princeton Junction (N.J.)
North and Central America--United States--New Jersey--Mercer--Princeton Junction

Rights status

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

Note

Side 2 of tape 1. There are 3 audio cassettes. Side 2 of tape 3 is blank.

Physical location

CASSETTE 557; Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA

Related item

[Interview with] Kenneth Neigh [sound recording] / [conducted by] Susan Miller.--http://catalog.history.pcusa.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumbe...

Identifier (local)

cassette557_neigh_tape1_side2

PID (Persistent Identifier)

islandora:116419

Bookmark

BookBags: