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Kenneth G. Neigh interviewed by Susan Miller, 1989-1990, tape 1, side 2.
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- speaker[Susan Miller speaking] This is side two of the oral history with Kenneth Neigh [Neigh, Kenneth Glenn] on December seventh nineteen
- speakereighty-nine in Princeton Junction. So
- speakersomeone came out to talk to your wife about going back to Detroit?
- speakerAnd, you. I have it you were Executive Presbyter of Detroit as of nineteen
- speakerforty-nine? Is that right? Yeah.
- speakerAnd then, overlapping with that, you filled that position till nineteen fifty-nine.
- speakerand you were also executive of the Synod of Michigan from fifty one to
- speakerfifty 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
- speakeradministrative messes.
- speakerThere still is a lot of pulling and hauling between big
- speakercity presbyteries and the
- speakersmaller presbyteries in population and was a distinct
- speakerdivision in Michigan at that time.
- speakerSo, it didn't make any sense
- speakerand so we put the synod and the presbytery together.
- speakerWe did the same with the Michigan and Detroit Council of Churches,
- speakerand I am told
- speakerthat the union is still very strong in between
- speakerour state Presbyterians and Detroit Presbyterians.
- speakerwell
- speakerWhat was Detroit like in the fifties?
- speakerDid you live in Detroit proper or did you live in a suburb? Now, we lived in
- speakera section of Detroit called the
- speakerNorth Riverdale Park.
- speakerWhat was Detroit like?
- speakerif
- speakerIt was. Detroit was always in turmoil.
- speakerI said once that
- speakeryou could almost tell what was going to happen,
- speakerIndustrially and culturally in our country because it happened
- speakerfirst in Detroit.
- speakerand
- speakerSo. Was there racial tension there? Did you see it? The
- speakerfirst racial tension was in nineteen forty-two. There was a riot out
- speakeron Belle Isle,
- speakerwhich is a
- speakerpark
- speakerkind of a island. And, there were black
- speakersoldiers around Detroit. And
- speakerwhite soldiers and black soldiers got into a fight.
- speakerI remember.
- speakerForty-two, of course, is when we were still in Allen Park.
- speakerand I remember going down
- speakerto the office.
- speakerIn the center of Detroit was a place called Grand Circus Park.
- speakerAnd all of a sudden I was engulfed by
- speakera crowd of high school students, men and
- speakerthey saw a black guy. And, I
- speakernever will forget. One of them got his head between his knees. I mean
- speakergot the black guy's head between this guy's knees
- speakerand they pummelled him.
- speakerA guy who ran a Jewish clothing store
- speakerand I finally got him out. It was a
- speakerit was a bad, bad situation.
- speakerAnd of course I was there during the organization of the
- speakerautomobile plant Walter Reuther was an old friend.
- speakerAnd, one of the curious things about it all was that
- speakerthe heads of the major automobile plants were all
- speakerPresbyterians.
- speakerWhat were you? What did you hope to do
- speakerin Detroit when you first got there? Did you have any aspirations of what
- speakeryou might do?
- speakerIn
- speakertaking the position that you took?
- speakerWell
- speakeryes. there was the
- speakerhistoric division between the
- speakerinner city pastors and the
- speakersuburban pastors.
- speakerAnd the
- speakerclimate was unhealthy.
- speakerI. I had been on the, of course, on a number of
- speakercommittees before I left and knew
- speakerwhere all the administrative and
- speakerspiritual weaknesses were.
- speakerand we plotted a lot of things together.
- speakerOne of the important things that had to be done was to
- speakerraise the level of giving to the
- speakerwork of the national church.
- speakerThat happened relatively quickly because.
- speakerThis is Machiavellian. But, I would I would
- speakerplay one of these big suburban pastors off against the
- speakerother in terms of their
- speakertheir benevolence giving. And, that is sort of
- speakermean to do.
- speakerUh.
- speakerHow do you think the responsibility of an executive presbyter
- speakerhave changed since the time
- speakeryou were there and you will
- speakerfilling that type of position?
- speakerI haven't the vaguest idea. There are some world events
- speakergoing on. I just want to bring them up and see if they had any impact
- speakeron you at the time? The Korean War was from nineteen
- speakerfifty to fifty-three. And also, in that time, the
- speakerMcCarthyism was going on. Did these things
- speakergive you any problems in
- speakerterms of the role you were trying to play within the Presbyterian Church? Oh, you haven't heard I am a well known Communist.
- speakerOh, are you? Ah, yes. The
- speakerKorean War, of course,
- speakerthanks to the years of
- speakertouched us only as it touched
- speakerthe majority of people in our society.
- speakerThe McCarthy thing was a different thing entirely.
- speakerI won't
- speakeryeah
- speakerI was before the House Un-American Activities Committee. I didn't realize that.
- speakeruh
- speakeruh
- speakerI still can't get my files
- speakerunder the Freedom of Information Act.
- speakerIt had to do with the
- speakera
- speakerguy who was the
- speakerdirector of one of our
- speakerneighborhood houses. And, he
- speakerhad been a member of a Communist
- speakercell in Chicago. And he was a graduate of Union Seminary
- speakerand
- speakerhe was hauled in. In addition to which,
- speakerone of the first things I learned was that everybody isn't going to
- speakerlike you. One of the people that didn't like me
- speakerwas a Presbyterian
- speakerfrom Lansing, who was on the House Un-American
- speakerActivities Committee.
- speakerSo we had quite a deal over that.
- speakerHow long did it go on?
- speakerOh
- speakera couple years, I guess. Something like that.
- speakerSo you can't get your file? The House Un-American Activities Committee, no
- speakerone can get them until fifty years.
- speakerThe F.B.I., the CIA files
- speakerunder the Freedom of Information Act, I
- speakergot from the F.B.I. a file on a speech that I
- speakermade out in Phoenix to the National Councilof Churches, in which
- speakerI accused the, and it was the truth, the
- speakerF.B.I. of having a plant in my office. And, it created. Now
- speakerThat's one part. And, that ain't much!
- speakerRight. And, the other was a C I A file
- speakerhad to do with a letter
- speakerthat I had written and a reply I had received from
- speakera friend in Russia. And you
- speakerknow I went back and forth from Cuba and all that kind of thing,
- speakerand I know that there are more stuff out there. Yeah.
- speakerBut, that's what they were telling you.
- speakerCivil Rights issues and the Civil Rights Act
- speakerpassed in nineteen fifty-seven.
- speakerI know later on the Board of
- speakerNational Missions, or the Committee on Church and Race, did
- speakerthese events in Detroit in urban city and seeing civil rights being played out,
- speakerdid that have a big impact
- speakeron you? Well, it was. As I stated
- speakerearlier, it started back in
- speakerLisbon, Ohio. So, it was a. I was about to say a
- speakerprogressive thing, but it wasn't
- speakerexactly that. it was responding to the events of a
- speakerparticular hour.
- speakerOK. There's a couple of events in the church. Nineteen
- speakerfifty-six women were allowed to be ordained. Do you
- speakerremember this? What was your reaction to it?
- speakerMy reaction? I guess you could say that I had some leadership in the
- speakerfight in Michigan.
- speakerI never will forget the vote in Detroit Presbytery. We had the
- speakerminister of First Church [Frew, Allan Maclachlan] was a. He was born in Scotland. And, he
- speakerwas brought over when he was about two years old, but he had the longest
- speakerScottish brogue that you ever heard. He made an
- speakerimpassioned speech against it to the presbytery meeting.
- speakerDid it, did it split the church in the area? No. It didn't. It wasn't that strong.
- speakerand then in nineteen fifty-eight, it was the merger of the PCUSA and
- speakerthe United Presbyterian Church of North America. The emphasis,
- speakeraccording to the history books was an emphasis throughout the
- speakerfifties. Church union, yeah. Did you do
- speakerdid you play any role in this, in the merger? I was on a commission.
- speakerYou were on a commission. Again, I was chairman of the Christian
- speakerEducation Committee. Then, at the
- speakerend, there were two or three odds and ends that, hadn't
- speakerbeen taken care of and
- speakerthree of us were appointed to do that. And, had I known at the time
- speakerthat I was going to be the General Secretary of the Board of National
- speakerMissions, I would have voted differently because three of us:
- speakerone I had to do with evangelism. And it was put in the Board of National Missions.
- speakerAnd one had to do with the
- speakerCaribbean. And, this is how I got mixed
- speakerup in Cuba, you see. And,
- speakerradio and television. And, it was put in the Board of National Missions.
- speakerHow did you feel about the merger personally? It was, from what
- speakerI understand from other people, kind of a, little bit of a heated issue
- speakerat times? Sure was in Pennsylvania.
- speakerOne of
- speakermy close friends was vigorously and vocally against.
- speakerHe was the executive of the Synod of Pennsylvania. He used
- speakerto say that United Presbyterians are denser in
- speakerWestern Pennsylvania than any place in the world.
- speakerHow do you feel about the merger?
- speakerWell
- speakerI had
- speakerSee. I developed
- speakerseveral philosophic tenets along the way. And
- speakerone of them is that you have to have
- speakerunion
- speakerde facto before you can have union de jour.
- speakerThis is it. I've tried to get that across
- speakerto COCU [Consultation on Church Union] when I was in COCU. And
- speakerCOCU has just run its course now, precisely because of that.
- speakerand
- speakerHal [Fredsell, Harold F., Presbytery Executive] and I felt that it would work in Michigan and in Detroit because we are
- speakeralready doing things together. And, it worked in a number of
- speakerplaces like
- speakerSt Louis and a number of metropolitan areas.
- speakerSo that Wayne County and
- speakerDetroit Michigan,
- speakerthere were no strong feelings at all.
- speakerit
- speakerThen, in nineteen fifty-nine, you were named the General Secretary of the Board of
- speakerNational Missions. How did this come about? How did the move come about?
- speakerWell
- speakerWell, we had
- speakerwhat we call the national staff in National Missions. It was
- speakermade up of headquarters and people
- speakerfrom the synods and presbyteries. I was active in that.
- speakerI had been the perennial budget chairman, and
- speakerthe president and all that kind of stuff. In
- speakeraddition to which, Hermann Morse, [Morse, H. N., [Hermann Nelson]] my predecessor, was very
- speakerclose and
- speakerhe had
- speakergone to Alma College and had a sister that
- speakerlived in Michigan, used to stay with us.
- speakeruh
- speakerOne foregone conclusion because the churches had just united
- speakerand there were considerable
- speakerworld of envy in the church for old United Presbyterian to be
- speakerGeneral Secretary of the Board.
- speakerNow, I was thinking about this the other day. I don't
- speakerfeel and I think this is probably the truth
- speakerThere were four people.
- speakerThe Associate General Secretary of the
- speakerof the Board [Rev. Louis H. Evans] , two pastors and I,
- speakerthat Hermann got together to talk about
- speakermission in the sixties.
- speakerWhat he actually was doing
- speakerwas, I
- speakerthink, at least trying to discover which one of the four of us
- speakercould handle the future and
- speakeranyway the
- speakerHermann, and
- speakerhe was a cagey old boy, believe me.
- speakerI never did meet with the committee ever. And,
- speakerthe only question that anyone ever asked me. This was by the
- speakerpresident of the Board at the time, Ray Lindquist [Lindquist, Raymond I., pastor First Presbyterian Church, Hollywood, CA]
- speakerHe asked me if I had a private income.
- speakerBecause salaries were so very low around there.
- speakerI remember they called
- speakerfrom the Board to my office,
- speakerRay did.
- speakerI didn't think that I would, you know. I would have liked to stay in Michgan
- speakerbecause you could see what was happening.
- speakerI was afraid to tell Jane.
- speakerI called her pastor, Harry De Young [De Young, Harry Rine, pastor Redford Presbyterian Church, Detroit]. Harry
- speakerwent over and told her.
- speakerGot somebody else to did it.
- speakerWas she unhappy about it? Oh, yes.
- speakerWe came near to ending our marriage. Jane was
- speakeralways happiest
- speakerabout the place she had just left. I know that feeling.
- speakerShe. We were still down at one fifty-six Fifth Avenue, she called
- speakerand she said Well I hope you're happy.
- speakerBoth of your kids came home crying today.
- speakerooh.
- speakerGlory, little guilt. Low blow.
- speakerSo, you moved then to New York
- speakerCity. Did you move in the City? No, no. into Scarsdale. Right, you told me that.
- speakerOne thing
- speakerI kept coming across when I was reading some of your articles was that you believed that
- speakerMissions really was getting Presbyterians
- speakerwhat they believe into what they do. Was this a philosophy
- speakeryou carried with you all along? Or was it? And then, you brought it
- speakerwith you into the Board of National Missions. Well, you see that started in Allen Park. Because there was so
- speakermuch to do there.
- speakerWhat was your first? The General Secretary job is a big job.
- speakerWhat do you remember as your first big challenge in that position?
- speakerTo stay alive! There were so many. Bill Morrison [Morrison, Willaim A.], my colleague,
- speakerat the Board of Christian Education, once asked me how I kept so many balls
- speakerup in the air at the same time.
- speakerWell, I had to reorganize the staff.
- speakerI had to reorganize out some of my oldest friends. if
- speakerI had to do something about
- speakerThe breach between the old United Presbyterians and the old Presbyterians.
- speakerbecause it was, it was
- speakera tenacity about traditions, you see, that had to be broken.
- speakerAnd it, it was a curious thing that, in the later years when
- speakerthings got rough, the old U.P.s
- speakerwere the ones that always were
- speakerthere.
- speakerWell.
- speakerCuba had broken apart then. And, there were
- speakerso many things. The church was growing so rapidly at that
- speakerperiod, we had to find ways of financing it. We
- speakerpushed a big deal with New York Life Insurance Company to
- speakerfinance church building. and
- speakerI always used to come out in my office and say
- speakerI retired at the right time.
- speakerThere was a whole business of closing institutions.
- speakerInstitutions that had a part in
- speakersome of the historic development of our
- speakercountry, like the
- speakerlike
- speakerthe Tucson Indian School. And, I got
- speakerI got all the flak for that, you see.
- speakerWell, flak isn't the right
- speakerword really.
- speakerI got expressions of concern
- speakerbut every phase of
- speakerthe National Missions of the Church was undergoing change.
- speakerI was on the airplane coming back from Atlanta,
- speakerthe same flight that Castro's sister was on when she defected.
- speakerWow!
- speakerDid you know it at the time? I didn't know it at the time,
- speakerbut when I
- speakerlanded in Mexico City, I found out very quickly, because
- speakerthere was a great big group of black-suited
- speakermen to meet her. And, I think, protect her, maybe.
- speakerHow much staff did you oversee as the General Secretary?
- speakerWell, it depends upon what you call.
- speakerThere again, it has to do with more my
- speakerphilosophy of administration.
- speakerI believe that mission is best administered where it is going on.
- speakerand.
- speakerdid most of the administration of the Board of National Missions when I was there
- speakerwas a collegiate one.
- speakerI tried to get the best people I could find and then let them do their best,
- speakerwhich was usually pretty good.
- speakerAnd,
- speakerin terms of numbers, it's, it's
- speakerit's a bit difficult to, because of that kind
- speakerof administration we had, to say. Who was
- speakerresponsible. Because it was diversified. Spread out. If you
- speakerwant a number, at one time, there were
- speakersomewhere between thirty five hundred and four thousand people
- speakerinvolved
- speakerin the National Missions enterprise in one way or another, the
- speakerfocused in New York.
- speakerIn nineteen sixty-three
- speakerthe
- speakerCommission on Church and Race was established.
- speakerDid that have.
- speakerIt had a direct connection with the Board of National Missions? Well, you could say that we
- speakerstarted the thing. That's what I thought. The
- speakergroup that you just mentioned, the Committee on Church and Race in the Board of
- speakerNational Missions was the predecessor of that.
- speakerWhat was its emphasis?
- speakerWell, obviously race, but beyond that? How did it
- speakeracto on that, I guess? The committee?
- speakerThe committee. The Committee. the
- speakerCommittee itself
- speakerattempted to point up what the issues were, and what they were going to be.
- speakerand. To get that
- speakerintelligence into the whole National Missions structure.
- speakerThat's what the Commission
- speakerOfficially that's the way that the
- speakerwhat 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.
- speakerbut.
- speakerThat's the way that it approach things in the beginning
- speakerto to get. And, one of the curious
- speakerthings about it all was that we, except for
- speakerthe establishment of the commission itself, the
- speakerjournal. We didn't. We any other
- speakerGeneral Assembly actions or any other thing we did because
- speakeryears before, the General Assembly had taken actions to
- speakerput floors under these things.
- speakerSome of them were in the early fifties.
- speakerDid you find your connection with the General Assembly a friendly one?
- speakerThe constant attempt to get more funding
- speakerI don't know.
- speakerWe
- speakerWill you repeat that. Well, I could be way off base.
- speakerNo. No. That is , it is germane. Okay. I was just wondering is
- speakeryour connections with the General Assembly when
- speakeryou spoke to them and gave your reports, was it a friendly atmosphere? Give and take atmosphere?
- speakerGenerally, it was two friendly
- speakeruntil the latter years when the Angela Davis thing came along.
- speakerBut, no, I remember we
- speakergot mixed up in community organisation with Saul Alinsky. You read anything about that?
- speakerNo. Don't know about that. Well this is this is
- speakerwhen we organized the whole fight,
- speakerfor example, in Rochester to do something about
- speakerCOZACK and
- speakerSaul Alinsky was a self-styled radical,
- speakercommunity organize, whom I had known
- speakerin Chicago. He organised blab back of the yards community,
- speakerwhich was the first of its kind. And, we
- speakergot. We and the Roman Catholic
- speakerchurch organized the
- speakerWoodlawn section of Chicago and
- speakeroh, the Twelfth St section in Detroit and that kind of thing.
- speakerAnd blinking. You know we have a bit more.
- speakerBut the
- speakerThis
- speakeris in response to the friendly atmosphere.
- speakerI would report to the General Assembly about Saul Alinsky
- speakerand there would be no questions at all.
- speakerand I. As I say. At that point, it was a little too friendly.
- speakerBut, in terms of
- speakerthe General Assembly office, That's why I
- speakersay it is germane. There
- speakerwas a good deal of nationalism between the New
- speakerYork offices and Philadelphia offices. And
- speakerI think one of the things that helped was that Blake [Eugene Carson Blake] was
- speakerall up until the time he died, was
- speakermy very close friend. So that
- speakerhe was my bridge partner.
- speakerI think that this might be a good
- speakerplace to stop.