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Kenneth G. Neigh interviewed by R. W. Bauer, 1983, side 1.
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- speakerWhen did you go to the Board? [Board of National Missions]
- speakerSeptember the first nine hundred fifty-
- speakernine. [Bauer] In terms of
- speakercrises, I guess we were
- speakerpast
- speakerthe very much? And the
- speakerrace thing was
- speakerjust beginning to brew? [Lewis] Well, so far as
- speakerwe were concerned, it was
- speakerthe one before
- speakerthat. It was the Cuban crisis.
- speakerCastro taking over, you know,
- speakerWe are. Our church
- speakeris very strong in Cuba.
- speakerand
- speakerinitially, there were a lot of our people
- speakerinvolved. Some of
- speakerthem served in the
- speakergovernment. But, as it progressed
- speakerin the direction
- speakerbecame clear, the exodus began.
- speakerAnd so, our problem then is
- speakerto do something about
- speakerhelping the flow of
- speakerrefugees, and at the same
- speakertime maintain the integrity of the church inside of Cuba. so it was a.
- speakerIt was not a worldwide church
- speakercrisis,
- speakerbut so far as the mission was concerned,
- speakerit was big.
- speakeryes. The refugees
- speakerproblems. It was more serious. I keep referring refugees every so many years.
- speakerDid the board [Board of National Missions, United Presbyterian Church in the USA]
- speakerhave a. At
- speakerthat point, did the Board have a unit or something that took care of refugees?
- speakeror was it done ecumenically or what? Well,
- speakerit was, it
- speakerwas supposed to
- speakerhave been done ecumenically. There was
- speakera lot of ecumenical
- speakerventures at that time. It depended. it depended on
- speakerthe strength and
- speakervitality and the fiscal power of the
- speakerdenominational units.
- speakerWe had, within the United Presbyterian Church
- speakerthe
- speakercommittee, which was made up of people from
- speakerCOEMAR [Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.] and the Board of National Missions.
- speakerJohn Corbin [Corbin, John C.], I think, was the chairman of that group.
- speakerAnd, there was a philosophical conflict there.
- speakerfor the people themselves who felt strongly
- speakerfrom people like Alfonso
- speakerRodriguez and other
- speakerleaders. Should have stayed in tune. John
- speakerMackay [President, Princeton Theological Seminary] was one of them.
- speakerHe was very, very vocal about refugees
- speakermoving out. So it was. It was a
- speakercurious kind of
- speakercrisis
- speakerand within it, I think
- speakerthat one of the. One of
- speakerthe strange shadowy figures in
- speakerall of these things was Max
- speakerBrowning. And, I don't think
- speakerthat Max's role in some of them should be
- speakerunder estimated. He had all of these contacts.
- speakeras you know. And
- speakerfor . Well, I don't know
- speakerWell, on every plane that left Cuba,
- speakerwe had two
- speakerseats that Max somehow had been able
- speakerto, to manipulate. [Bauer] Oh, gosh.
- speakerthat sounds
- speakerlike Max. [Neigh] And after the
- speakerUnited States government embargoed
- speakermoney.
- speakerI think we were one of the first groups to learn how to
- speakerlaunder. We make contributions to
- speakerthe World Council of Churches, and they sent it to, sent it to the
- speakerCuban church. [Bauer] That is fantastic.
- speaker[Neigh] I remember I
- speakerthink Dave was there and Bryant. We went to
- speakerGeneva one time with the Cuban church. Lesslie Newbigin was then working
- speakerwith the World Council of Churches. And he sat there and
- speakershook his head. He said, I was. I have always wanted to see some New York
- speakerbureaucrats in operation.
- speaker[Bauer] That wasn't very nice in
- speakerpublic
- speakerbut the conflict was resolved
- speakeressentially by helping as many get out
- speakeras wanted to get out? [Neigh] Yep.
- speakerand helping those who wanted to stay to
- speakerstay. There was a
- speakerstrong feeling in
- speakerparts of New
- speakerJersey.
- speakerThe Cuban church was a
- speakerpresbytery as a part of the Synod of New
- speakerJersey at the time. There
- speakerwas a strong
- speakerconflict in the synod there.
- speakerThere were those who wanted
- speakerto help the Cuban church become an
- speakerindependent church. And, there were those who wanted
- speakerto keep the
- speakerchurch as a part of the Synod of New
- speakerJersey. [Bauer] I remember at the Nairobi Assembly [Assembly of the World Council of Churches, November 23-December 10, 1975]
- speakerthere. After the Assembly was over, there was a dinner with Thompson [Thompson, William Phelps, Stated Clerk, UPCUSA] sponsor of the people from the
- speakerUPC church. fear filled. Oh, yeah. oh, yeah. I. Two months
- speakerago, I
- speakergot a telephone call from RaouI
- speakerHernandez. Fernandez, who is
- speakerstill
- speakera minister of the Presbyterian Church of Havana, inquiring. He had heard that I had problems.
- speaker[Bauer] So that was the
- speakerfirst crisis after you got there. [Neigh] Um huh. [Bauer] Then
- speakerplace
- speakeremerged the
- speakerrace issue. [Neigh] um huh. [Bauer] Can you reflect on that
- speakerit but because the race
- speakerissue was so strong in the newspapers, the
- speakerquestion of how the church's attention was captured is almost moot. I mean, I mean it was. A lot of people said that
- speaker[Neigh] Well, yeah.
- speakerhave
- speakerFor some reason, it's obvious, but I know
- speakerEisenhower [Eisenhower, Dwight David] had been able to put
- speakerdown the McCarthy thing.
- speakerBut, underneath all of
- speakerthat
- speakerwas a scabbing over of racial
- speakerissue. And, the church was
- speakerdealing with it
- speakerbefore it became the racial issue as
- speakersuch in the efforts
- speakerto deal with the developing urban crisis. At that
- speakertime was not identified as a racial thing.
- speakerBut everybody
- speakerknew that the urban crisis
- speakerwas a black white crisis.
- speakerso
- speakerthe church in that way was
- speakerdealing with that issue, before
- speakerit became the newspaper issue.
- speaker[Bauer] In local situations or nationally or both?
- speaker[Neigh] Both. Under Hermann, [Morse, Hermann N. General Secretary, Board of National Missions], they had an office called, what was it?
- speaker[Bauer] City and Industrial. Yeah. [Neigh] C and I. C and I
- speakerand
- speakerthen there were people
- speakerspotted around that were part of the so-called national staff.
- speakerWe mapped peace. That's how
- speakerMatt happened to come to Detroit , I think.
- speakerSo as I say, we were dealing
- speakerwith crisis or the roots of the crisis
- speakeror what was identified as such.
- speaker[Bauer] Was there?
- speakerwas there a particular emphasis?
- speaker[Neigh] Later on, they got into community organization
- speakerI think, or was it more social service?.
- speakerYeah, It
- speakerwas
- speakermainly was dealt with through
- speakerthe Settlement House
- speakercommunity house, like Dodge. [Bauer] Like Dodge.
- speaker[Neigh] And, the ones in Chicago in particular.
- speaker[Bauer] I have a
- speakerpicture framed in my home, an antique, that
- speakercame from the attic of Dodge House. When I came
- speakerto the site, one of the things that happened was that they had already decided to close Dodge.
- speakerSo my first assignment on this
- speakerstaff was to go down there and take care of the
- speakercommittal issues. [Neigh] Yeah. [Bauer] And, in that process, I was
- speakerscrounging around in the attic and found this beautiful old picture.
- speakerframe.
- speakerand latched
- speakeronto it. [Neigh] Well, it probably came from one of the
- speakerDodge family
- speaker[Bauer] That is interesting.
- speaker[Neigh] At that time,
- speakerHermann [Morse, H. N. [Hermann Newton]]. Hermann had, had a
- speakercommittee to sort
- speakerof map strategy. This was
- speakerin the mid fifties.
- speakerI don't recall the
- speakerpeople who were on it. I was.
- speakerNow, I think, Jim
- speakerRobinson [Robinson, James Herman] and there was the guy,
- speakera black pastor, that was married to Dorothy Mingle , the singer.
- speakerHe was on it.
- speakerSo that there were those things going
- speakeron. [Bauer] Was that a national staff committee? [Neigh] No, it
- speakerwasn't national staff. It was a committee that had been appointed by
- speakerthe Board of National Missions. It was made
- speakerup
- speakerheadquarters national
- speakerstaff. For some curious reason I always found myself on
- speakerthose doggone things. Was on too many of them, I guess.
- speakerAnd then pastors
- speakerand laymen.
- speakerThe usual mix. [Bauer] All right.
- speakerThey monitored the strategy. You know, whe we started looking at
- speakerthis crisis question,
- speakerthe first one that anybody can
- speakerfind that really the church responded to formally was back in the nineteen, nineteen three or something.
- speakerSteathily respond to the crisis in the cities.
- speakerAt that time it was immigrant and labor. [Neigh] Oh,
- speakerreally! I suppose that was when the settlement houses came into being.
- speaker[Bauer] That's right. Soon after that, they started up. in spite of that.
- speakerIt is interesting that the Presbyterians,
- speakeralthough the Presbyterians were all hung up in
- speakerFundamentalist- Modernist controversy. And didn't get involved in the
- speakerSocial Gospel quite the way others did. It came around to formally responding.
- speakerWe set up a staff and an office.
- speakerSo that's what you inherited when you went there is that kind of thing.
- speakerDid you set about creating a different structure to deal with the city issue or?
- speaker[Neigh] Well. Well.
- speakernot consciously.
- speakerOne of the first things I had to
- speakerdo and I knew it, from looking at it from the outside
- speakerwas that there had to be a complete restructure
- speakerof the board.
- speakerAnd it wasn't all that easy, but I had a number of
- speakerbreaks. And that is that I
- speakergot a spate of retirements.
- speakerOkay.
- speakerHarold Baldwin [Baldwin, Harold H.]was the head of that division.
- speakerCame up for retirement, which
- speakerwas a really good deal because he was a very, very conservative Republican type.
- speaker[Bauer] All right. [Neigh] And so that it was at that
- speakertime that we brought
- speakerabout the reorganization.
- speakerand a
- speakerreordering of things.
- speaker[Bauer] And was that when
- speakerRamage [Ramage, David, Jr.] was brought in? [Neigh] No. Ramage came much later. No, Bryant was there and Art
- speakerStevenson. [Bauer] Oh, that's right.
- speakerSo that that didn't. In that reorganization
- speakermade it
- speakermade it easier for people
- speakerlike that
- speaker[Bauer] Do you recall what the
- speakertitle of the unit became then?
- speakerIt was Strategy and Development, but that was a long time later.
- speakerNeigh] Uh. No, I think that was the name of the unit from the beginning.
- speakerMeryl. Meryl Luaos was the, you know, first
- speakerchairman
- speaker[Bauer] And Meryl, of course, was a research type.
- speakerBryant was an activist. [Neigh] And Bryant was
- speakeran activist. That's right. And Art was the, how was it? the
- speakergreaser of bureacratic skids? [Neigh] Yeah, but,
- speakerand I forgot
- speakerArt. Art didn't stay all
- speakerthat long.
- speakerIt was an ideological conflict
- speakerArt was not as
- speakermuch of an activist as his father was.
- speakerSo as we as we moved along, we moved
- speakerwe moved Art out of the office.
- speakerand into Max's
- speakeroffice then.
- speaker[Bauer] so
- speakerBryant was very early on? [Neigh] Yeah. Finders keepers.
- speaker[Bauer] And did he bring with him all those
- speakercontacts with? Well, he had all the
- speakercontacts with Johnson C. Smith?
- speaker[Neigh] Well I am
- speakertoo, for a very curious kind of reason.
- speakerI had been on the Council on Theological
- speakerEducation, ever since I went back to McCormick for my activity
- speakerand
- speakerso I knew the presidents of Johnson C. Smith, knew Bryant's
- speakerfather before I knew Bryant.
- speakerSo, so that we had
- speakerall these
- speakercontacts in the South. and I had been
- speakeron, of course, on the national staff
- speakerand had known a lot of the black
- speakerpastors in the south because of their being on the national staff
- speakeras chairmen of the National Missions committees.
- speaker[Bauer] What is
- speakerthe first thing that you would describe as kind of a
- speakercrisis situation? Could you, in terms of urban race, however you want to split?
- speaker[Neigh] The first one that I recall. Well, this
- speakeris in nineteen forty-two, the race riots in Detroit.
- speakerI
- speakerwas in the middle of that one.
- speaker[Bauer] That is something that
- speakernobody has ever talked about. Even though they worked in Detroit, they never talked about that.
- speakerThat's right! [Neigh] Well, I was, I never will forget.
- speakerI used to go down, go down to the office
- speakeralmost every, every Monday. I said I was going to the office, but what I really
- speakerwent down for was to go to the Fox Theatre.
- speakerAny
- speakerway I was walking across Grand Circus
- speakerPark on Monday. And, all of a sudden, this
- speakermob was, swept by me, and
- speakerthey had collared a black guy
- speakerThey had him down on his knees
- speakerwith his head between them together
- speakergoing like that
- speakerAnd a
- speakerJew came out of one of those clothing stores beside Fife's there. [Bauer] Oh, yeah?
- speaker[Neigh] and got him up himself
- speakerbut managed to disperse the
- speakerdisperse the mob. And, I watched them turn
- speakerover street cars
- speakerand automobiles in Paradise Valley.
- speakersealed off. Bill Molbon [Molbon, William H., pastor St. John's Presbyterian Church], who was a pastor then
- speakerSome of us organized
- speakercar, car pools
- speakerto pick themup so they could get out of Paradise Valley. So that was.
- speaker[Bauer] So that was. In a sense the church locally at that point was in the middle of it again.
- speaker[Neigh] Oh yes and that was. That was a Claude Williams era too. [Williams, Claude C.]
- speakerwith
- speakerClaude had been brought in to
- speakerdeal with the urban industrial
- speakercrisis, worked on it with the presbytery [Presbytery of Detroit].
- speakerThis is way, way back, as I say, in forty-two.
- speakerto
- speakerDo you know anything about Claude? Oh, he is one of the most colorful characters
- speakerthat I ever met. He was a sharecropper and
- speakeroffice
- speakerand he had gotten saved.
- speakerThen got some education
- speakerand was brought
- speakerto Detroit
- speakerby Kenneth Miller, who was the executive of the presbytery at that time.
- speakerLater on became the head of the New York City
- speakerMission Society. But I was
- speakeron Claude's committee, when
- speakerClaude would go out and make his speeches and he wasn't very careful. And, I remember one meeting
- speakerHerb Hudnut [Hudnut, Herbert B., pastor, Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church] was giving Claude hell about something,which I don't know,
- speakerAnd Claude said
- speakerWell. A spade is
- speakerGod damn
- speakerspade to me. And Herb said, but a spade isn't a goddam spade
- speakerbecause Claude said, a spade is a goddam spade to me.
- speakerlater on
- speakerwe. There was a big, big stink,
- speakerand Claude got separated from the
- speakerchurch, and the presbytery unfrocked him.
- speaker[Bauer] Really? [Neigh] Uh-huh.
- speaker[Bauer] Now was his salary
- speakerpaid for by
- speakerthe, by the Board of National Missions? [Neigh] Paid by the Presbytery of Detroit.
- speaker[Bauer] And, hired by the Presbytery of Detroit. [Neigh] But, I suspect Hermann's
- speaker[Morse, H. N. [Herman Nelson], Administrative Secretary, Board of National Missions] hand was in it some place
- speakerHe wasn't General
- speakerSecretary of the Board of National Missions in name. He was de facto.
- speakerI suspect
- speakerhis hand was in it. [Bauer] So the race. Or course, the war did some things about race relations that I think might not have been done otherwise
- speakerAfter you got to New
- speakerYork in, let's see, fifty-nine
- speakerAnd that is a long time later. That is seventeen years later. Is there anything in Detroit that you recall after the war? In particular, race?
- speakerThat period was.
- speakerThe crisis at that time
- speakerwas of course, McCarthy [McCarthy, Joseph] [McCarthyism]
- speakerand I was before
- speakerthe House UnAmerican Activities Committee. There was a Congressman Kit, Kit Clardy [Clardy, Kit Francis] from
- speakerLansing, who was on that Committee. He was. He was going to get me. And the chairman,
- speakerthe staff person for that Committee was a card-carrying
- speakerPresbyterian lawyer from Philadelphia. And, one time
- speakerI was down there, and he showed me
- speakerthe file of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee had on me. He didn't show me the file
- speakerbut he showed me the thickness of it. [Bauer] Three inches thick. [Neigh] Um. And, under the Freedom of
- speakerInformation Act, I got some of my
- speakerF.B.I. and
- speakerCIA stuff, but they are all blacked out and you can't read them.
- speakerAnd you have to, to get the originals, you have to
- speakersue. And, this was before Reagan. [Bauer] Good lord.
- speakerSo you really did try to see them? [Neigh] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
- speakerWell the House Un-American
- speakerActivities file is
- speakernot under the Freedom of Information Act.
- speakerWhen the Committee
- speakerdisbanded, the
- speakerfiles were sealed, I think, for
- speakerfifty years, or something like that. I'm not sure. Anyway
- speakerMillicent Fenwick [Fenwick, Millicent Hammond, Congresswoman from New Jersey] tried to get them for me and couldn't.
- speakersent
- speaker[Bauer] So you got caledl up before the Committee. Did you had any
- speakerrole in what turned to be
- speakerthe famous letter to the Presbyterians. [Neigh] No.
- speakerthat I was when I was back
- speakerin Detroit.
- speaker[Bauer] What was your? What was the activity
- speakerthat they were
- speakertrying to pressure on? Just concerned about minorities and stuff or was it something else?
- speaker[Neigh] No.
- speakerthey
- speakerto were inquiring into
- speakermy associations. Claude
- speakerWilliams [Williams, Claude C.] , for example., was branded by them as a Communist. And, one
- speakerOh, I had been to
- speakerRussia. And a guy. Did you ever know Joe Novack?
- speakerHe was the head of Dodge House at one time. [Bauer] The name is familiar.
- speaker[Neigh] Well, he. [Bauer] His name came up when I was doing the research
- speaker[Neigh] Well,
- speakerhe had been at one
- speakertime and for a brief period, a member of a communist cell in Chicago. And a poor, loose. One of the most unattractive physical
- speakerthat I've ever known. And,
- speakerso they had him. And they tried to sweat him.
- speakerAnd did sweat him. Mainly I was down there to
- speakertry to defend him.
- speakerand these F.B.I. and C.I.A. files are
- speakernot related to that. They are related to
- speakeractivities after I went to the Board of National Missions and the friendship that I had with a professor of English literature at the University of Moscow.
- speakerSo that's. Those files are not
- speakerrelated to that period. [Bauer] Right. Okay, so
- speakerafter you got to New
- speakerYork, if we can jump. What was the first crisis
- speakerkind of thing in terms of urban or
- speakerrace that you recall about that?
- speaker[Neigh] I don't. It was the kind of thing that the church
- speakerslid into, you know. It was a
- speakergrowing thing that wasn't related
- speakerto one or
- speakertwo
- speakercrises in the church. I had. I had known
- speakerMartin Luther King. He had come to Detroit. Now, we
- speakerused to have those Lenten kinds of central Lenten services,
- speakerSo King came every year to that. So, I invited him in Detroit
- speakerand, I suppose
- speakerthat there are
- speakerthings at that period and at that
- speakertime that did
- speakeradd steam to what we were doing, but I can't recall of any crisis thing until
- speakerlater
- speakeron [Bauer] Okay. [Neigh] We had these schools
- speakerdown Wilcox County in Alabama
- speakerAnd, there had been old U.P.N.A. churches [United Presbyterian Church of North America]
- speakerand there had
- speakerbeen. The Klu Klux Klan had
- speakertried to storm one of the schools down there and
- speakerthis kind of propaganda
- speakerthat they always put out. People co-habitating with wildlife crap and
- speakerso.