Dr. Clinton Marsh in his home in Atlanta in an effort to discover what he knows and remembered remembers about the Black governing bodies. This is December six nineteen ninety. Lawrence Bottoms is doing the interviewing. Clint, tell me something about your birth. When were you born?

I was born October 28, 1916, in Wilcox County, Alabama, on the campus of the Arlington Literary and Industrial Institute.

Oh,.

A united Presbyterian North America Mission School.

Tell me something about your family.

My paternal grandfather was freed from slavery at the age of 20, just a few miles from where I was born. Thanks to the Presbyterian mission schools, his children were able to be educated. My father went to school at Prairie Institute, just very near where he was born and lived to finish there, and then went to finish his high school and went to college at Knoxville College. My mother was born in Selma, Alabama, was teaching at a Baptist mission school in Wilcox County, Alabama, where she and my father met my brothers and sisters and two brothers and a sister. All also attended the Mission School there in Wilcox County, Alabama.

Did they become members of the Presbyterian Church there

My father and his family were AMEs But my father and the two sisters who went to Knoxville College joined the Presbyterian Church. My mother became a Presbyterian when she married, my father.

You were born then in the Presbyterian Church.

Yes.

Tell me something about your relationship as a child growing up in that church?

Well, I say I was born on Mission School campus. We did leave that area for a while before I could remember and returned when I was eighth grade returning, then to Camden, Alabama, where I did my rest of my secondary education and lived again on the campus of Camden Academy, where my mother was teaching. My father, who was a teacher, had been advised that he should be in something out of doors for his health. And so he was performing and we were living on the campus so that the formative years of my life were spent on the campus of Presbyterian Mission School, where we had a very good school, but only because they were very good people, very good teachers. The we had no library one physics experiment was dropping two rocks out of the second story, Windows eight, which would hit first. But we had their very dedicated and competent teachers, many of whom the elementary grades had only the normal training and had no college degrees. My mother was one of those she had gone to. Was called Spellman University. Oh no, there were no well and then did some work at Spelman. I've never been able to find out how much, but these teachers were very well trained and very dedicated so that in spite of not having many of the things which are considered now essential for education, we were getting good, solid education.

These institutions were under the United Presbyterian Church.

United Presbyterian Church of North America.

Did you have? Some white teachers, too? Or all Black

Oh no, they were all Black there had never been in those schools, any white teachers. I was over Wilcox County recently doing some oral history, talking to a man who was 91, and Tom Threadgill's father who had just turned 100. Talking with them about the history of those schools and I was doing that really with the Historical Society in mind.

Tell me something about the influence of any schools on black governing bodies.

Well, there's no way to separate the church and the schools. You had churches where we had had schools. See, that wasn't the only Presbyterian influence there. The United Presbyterian influence came through the schools. There were six originally in Wilcox County, one closed before I remember the others continued to function until in the late thirties. Then we had school that happens and Race Mill Tennessee and Knoxville College, which had been, of course, not just the college but originally elementary school and everything else. An institute adjacent to Virginia Henderson instituted in the same North Carolina and as a small school that Norfolk, Virginia. And these are the places where we had churches so that you keep the principals, the schools for the most part with the pastors and thereby the Presbyterian

school,

so that there was there was no way to separate separate means and the and the governing bodies.

Tell me your experience in my government.

Well, of course, my day is in high school. I knew very little about the governing board, except that occasionally the Presbyterian met once a year somewhere in this big hunk of geography. But my early ministry at Chase City, Virginia was in that same Presbyterian. I was ordained, but incidentally it was called Tennessee Presbyterian. I'm not sure why, since there were more churches in Alabama, they were in Tennessee

and there's covered Tennessee, Alabama and everything you

could in North Carolina,

you had some territory. How often did Presbyterian meet

just once a year,

once a year? Yes, sir. The the churches within that presbytery were resourced. In what way?

They were all commission supported churches. The membership was always small for the United Presbyterian Church. Took an official stand. For these schools, they said that the blacks in these areas had churches, they were so that they were seeking to educate them, not to make them Presbyterian. It would help them be better Methodist and Baptist and whatever they were so that there was a stated policy that it would not be progressive work. But there was always a little church with the school. And so there were some Presbyterians. The hindsight we can see that it was a mistake on the part of the church. You've heard the expression that if black it was a Negro in those days, was there anything other than Memphis that was somebody

tamping down

where you see, the church was tampering with us? Yeah, it was changing a lot of things in our lives and there were many who live with the even the high school education they got in. These schools were educated beyond the ministers and the local churches, and thereby there were many who were disenchanted with the churches, and the Presbyterian Church was not aggressively seeking to

the schools and were the responsibility of the national governing body.

And I guess

their appropriately was a member of the Senate. Yes, but it was that cynical.

It was a member of what was called second Senate Originalist, Second Synod of the West, which was the western part of Ohio and Indiana and Michigan.

I mean, it Presbyterian in the Senate.

I guess I don't remember just right now, but I would just have to do a little research to

remember you had to travel long ways. And for Presbyterian meeting with where

I went from Chasity Virginia to Camden, Alabama Presbyterian meeting But then for Senate meeting, I went from Chasity to Dayton, Ohio,

but I was trying get there. But I remember that same thing in the southern church, you know, with the esthetic of of it and the Presbyterian that they had to do that kind of travel.

I think it should be pointed out to put it in context that there were mission churches for whites in Kentucky and East Tennessee that though they were much closer to Tennessee Presbyterian, they were members of a southern Ohio Presbyterian Church, so there was just a little bit of actual segregation there.

What what year it would to be?

What years?

Yeah, what period in history was it?

Well, this continued from the late 19th century, but up to within the 20s and all of these schools, both for the whites and blacks, will continue within. The churches were still there.

What influence did the prometteurs have on the work that was being done in the schools?

Any hay Presbyterian research did not have any relationship to to the schools. The Board of American Missionary operated the school directly from Pittsburgh.

What did they Presbyterian take responsibility for resourcing any of the churches helping to strengthen the churches in any way?

Very little, very little. In fact, that decision of the of the board regarding reaching out, I guess affected the

the school principals as a point out, who for the most part,

were the pastors as well. Oh, certainly totally during the early years. And so there was not much thought of building a church like. The church was just churches were just sort of an asset to the school,

and I hear you talk about a black governing body, does this mean that the governing bodies did not do much governing, right? That they did. They were largely fellowship devotional.

Well, they had Presbyterian needed. Well, one thing, of course, they did ordain. Yeah. The ministers. I was ordained by Tennessee Presbyterian in 1944 in Chasity, Virginia, but we were so scattered that place. I say the Presbyterian did it. There were about three minutes is up in that area and they and some elders, you know, I

used to know there was some ways of resourcing and trying to strengthen individual churches. Was that done from the national level

that wasn't done?

What about Dr McCoy? Was he?

Well, see, that was in the USA

feature as USA Church in the United Presbyterian Church. None of it. There was no such thing. No church were just left out there by themselves.

They look here and I say they were for the most part. So the word escapes me, but

they were just junk with the school junk. That's the word to the school.

I so that there were somewhere for the students and the teachers to worship those who were living on the campus and and the local people who wanted to join. And always that was something they did. But the whole idea of building congregations was just not in it. When I went to Chief City, Virginia, they were still worshiping in worshiping in the chapel. And, you know, of course, it was still the boarding school there. And when knowing that the time for these schools was drawing to a close, I asked the congregation whether they thought that we should go work toward the church building. And I just hope they never thought that had an idea of of anything like this.

All right. United Presbyterian Church and the right. The governing body was just a governing body in Maine, being a strong adjunct to the school, to the school.

You could you could say that they accept us safer having to do

with ordination still

like ordination. But the. Well, well, I don't know that I could exactly say that the the board of American Missions. Pleased the ministers, but they did because they placed the principals

and the period ahead. You had a mission school and had mission churches operating under a national board. And boy, did this change any when the two churches united?

Well, when the churches united, the schools were on the way out. But at this time? In the US, at a church, there were the segregated Presbyterian, as you know, Birmingham women and others. The Tennessee Presbyterian did not consider itself was certainly hated Presbyterian. It just that there were the name of a black church. So when the reunion at the reunion the merger took place, the Tennessee Presbyterian refused to be linked with Birmingham Presbyterian

and remaining still Tennessee Presbyterian

remaining Tennessee Presbyterian. They said they would would not go into a segregated situation, which was true in Birmingham, where you had a white yeah. So they were then attached to Union Presbyterian, which was the East Tennessee area.

Was that a white Presbyterian, a black Presbyterian

that was a predominately white Presbyterian? There were Knoxville Church and two other small churches in it so that they then still had to go to Tennessee.

How did these how did these churches then function in the United Presbyterian?

I don't have much information about that. Jim Rees could be the person who could clarify that because he was in the Presbyterian at that time. And it was in that type of situation which, Hey, how are you doing?

Well, I'm Sam. OK.

It was in that situation which an event took place, which you may or may not have heard about grow and get as home and another minute of being beaten and killed in Alabama. No, I did. Well, they had come from East Tennessee. Jim reason these two ministers to Camden shaking something about maybe the property or something like that. And they drove down and they stopped to get some gas that they got into Camden and somebody sold these to white man and this black man. Of course, this was in the civil rights days when whites and blacks together generally meant Freedom Riders. So the word got around and the two whites checked into the hotel, and Reese went to stay with friends as he had been past today in Camden, in the middle of the night to the hotel, clearly came up with a shotgun and started beating the two men and threatened to do what it did them bodily harm. Geddes managed to get out, but he broke the other man's on heroin and they had to spirit him out. But Wilcox County in the middle of the night and get them to sell. And in Selma, there was nothing they could do about the man's broken arm because they took him to the white hospital that raised questions had happened and the Catholic hospital was there. Blacks was bred to treat it quite so that a black doctors sit down as best he could, and they got him all to put in out of there the next morning.

That's within the civil rights. Yeah, I

see. And so this was this was the Presbyterian involved

in

the Presbyterian sending people down to do something. That sort of thing had just never been the fact we're going to see do in your ministry.

Were you a minister in that presbytery at that time?

No. By that time, I had left Tennessee Presbyterian and had gone to Indianapolis. And I'm not sure. Well, I guess what happened there would happen with the churches in North Carolina. Well, yes, they became part of the black Presbyterian in North Carolina, North Carolina. Hmm. And they didn't have a church in South Carolina.

Tell me something about Mr. Reese. Do you know anything of his contribution to the church? He worked in that area?

Yes, many people. I have to correct people who think that that was Jim's home. He was from Kentucky, but he went to Knoxville College and became a Presbyterian, then went to Pittsburgh Senior Seminary. He then went to his first parish ministry, was in the little church at camp. And he was the first pastor who was not principal of the school.

Tell me something about you mentioned Parish now was the parish idea that several churches a parish in the United Presbyterian Church so used to have some parish workers you're familiar with.

No, that was

U.S. I mean, you say church? Yeah, he had some parish workers. Yeah. And when you mention the word parish, I thought you talked about it just as one church. I see. Yeah. When I was in school, still in existence at that time,

school was still still in existence and were under Jim's leadership. Church structure was built on the campus worship, moved them out of the chapel when the whole integration thing happened in Wilcox County government, so they couldn't dodge it and they condemned the property took it over before paying the church for what the temple was worth, I guess, and forced them to move the church off the campus.

So the school, whatever existence,

will not immediately take the continued for a while as the public school in until finally they couldn't dodge and they moved the the school over to what had been the quite high school. But the whites all left. So is this matter transfer in the black?

And then you just had a church left there.

It just had a church, but they wouldn't let you stay on the property.

The church the church had moved to some other had had to

move it elsewhere,

and it became a member of what Presbyterian of the Birmingham Birmingham Presbyterian? Yes. The the influence of race and work board up to national emission limit

major will well, not immediately. He left there and went to and was passed within our school college. From there, he went to the staff of Catawba Petroleum Presbyterian. That's when he moved into the wider work of the church.

Did you know anything about the work in Catawba Presbyterian? No. That would be information that Mr. Reeves would have.

Well, you could see Joe Gaston, the seminary. The person who could tell you that much better than Reese Reese came and went. I see Joe was one of those people who grew up in that Presbyterian.

So Joe Gaston is one of the people we want to talk to to get some history on it. Controller of which is right. You went into Indianapolis.

Yes.

Tell me something about your experience in Indianapolis. You would have a black church. Your church was a member of a geographical Presbyterian. Right? Tell me something about you in the course of that church and the things that went on in

this church had begun in 1988, when some graduates of Knoxville College, all of whom had become enamored of the Presbyterian Church in their college days and I went to State College. Many of those people went to high school and college Knoxville College, and they wanted a United Presbyterian Church there. I was so happened that there was a Black Presbyterian Church there, a USA church, but they wanted a United Presbyterian Church there. And one has to suspect that they wanted one where they would be the leadership. But it turned out so that church was begun in 1988 and error on the part of the. And this was done not by the Presbyterian, by the Board of Mission. The commissions again. And so this church was started actually the members out of the other Presbyterian church, which I say was

was dead wrong? Yeah. All right. Now you had a church in a geographical presbytery. Yes, that was started by a national board, national borders. How did the Presbyterian react to that?

Well, see, this was 1980

and worried about not.

I don't know what extent they were. The Presbyterian was involved, but that sort of thing was done. In the United pro-freedom

church, we know would have done generally by all the Presbyterian Church women.

Well, I don't know, but you remember I was on the board of American missions and we were starting churches in Detroit and so forth. We were working with the Presbyterian. But the financing was from the board and the board really had more to do with the church getting started than the Presbyterian.

Is that was that true of all of those churches in that area where they had the black churches? Hendlerlite Presbyterian that national board.

But what I'm saying that it wasn't just the black churches that

the bullets died, it was white churches against

what I imagine to try it. And there's various places. It did, really. It was related a great deal through the Senate because I remember that we in the American board going to we met part of our meeting with the Senate executives to discuss these churches in their synod. But the the board had a type of poor function that just went out altogether with the merger because nobody else was to doing it.

Then you had governing bodies that were not affected, even the Lt. Governor.

Well. I won't say they weren't effective, I'm just saying at the beginning it was starting new churches that the national board had a great deal more

to do with all of these churches resource after they got started, who helped them in their education, where you thought,

Well, if you had a strong Presbyterian that, then they did it. So happened that in Indiana, our Presbyterian was. Not much stronger in numbers than Tennessee Presbyterian, I think Tennessee Torres, 16 churches and we had only 21 churches in the state of Indiana who were moved by that have another story that I don't know because so I moved around. Some of there used to be a Presbyterian church. They used to be a. They have put that Presbyterian was it was geographical Presbyterian, but it was not much stronger than Tennessee.

Whatever happened to a US, a church in Indianapolis, they could finally absorb that church.

Yes. So the two were the two struggling mission supported churches. But there were some problems in the USA church that followed. The Presbyterian really just gave up on it and then closed. And then most of the members then came to Witherspoon,

which was the you and Witherspoon got to be a good, strong church.

Then when I left there, we were slightly over 800 members. We were the largest Presbyterian church in Presbyterian. You knew only black, but the

large

and we were the largest. Even when the the merger came, we were the largest second largest black church in the denomination.

What happened after the merger in regards to Presbyterian?

Well, the whole thing then, except for that time for a while, the Tennessee Presbyterian was attached to two Tennessee two Union Presbyterian. Other than that, the Presbyterian just all became geographical. With the exception, of course, of the court of Presbyterian, of which there still

is an argument about what is going

on there. But other than that, everything we got to do.

What do you see in regards to the Dakota Presbyterian? Because it's still a kind of a racial situation?

Yes, but at the insistence of the Native Americans?

Oh oh. Hmm.

Right. When the churches merged, I was asked to serve on the Committee on Segregated Presbyterian. And since this was the tail end of that committee, and the only thing left was they call it a Presbyterian. And we recommended to the church that it continue as such a Presbyterian. I think it's still true for the minority.

Pro-British governing bodies are still having difficulty within the denomination of new.

Well, when you say the no idea Presbyterian is this there's only one seat

that is to call that is the court. Yeah.

And their problem is not that the church says you must be segregated, but they insist on

being set themselves

because some of the things that they pointed out to us was that they just the cultural operation is so different that. They do things by consensus when they talk and talk and talk, and finally, they reached consensus and they say we sit in meetings and you talk a few minutes and somebody makes a motion and we have even got a situation in our minds yet.

And they want to move a little slower.

Yeah. And I saw that cultural difference when I was on the national evangelism staff and that was part of my area and I was asked to speak at their meeting. Meet for two days once a year and have to sit through that. Firstly, a meeting. I realize that the things I've been saying about evangelism had no validity to the cultural situation, just so absolutely different.

Tell me about your responsibility in the area of evangelism. You were working in at the national level. Yes. Tell me about your responsibilities as an event, you know, regular.

Well, I guess the Board of National Missions figured that with Witherspoon Church having grown like it, did I to know something about this? So I was asked to join the staff of serving the North Central Area, which was Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas, so that I wanted to vote in Alabama what I was doing up in that icebox with the service field secretary for evangelism.

What were some of your responsibilities? What were we endeavoring to do?

Well, to to spur evangelism. By carrying on Presbyterian workshops,

you were researching all of the Presbyterian, all of the press, both black and white.

I see there there were

no, no, no white. Oh, black, black. I see no black with white in Native American.

So, yeah, I see. Mm hmm.

What were some of the things you did to resource your churches?

Well, primarily through Presbyterian workshops, which were carried on. I mean, the Presbyterian is developed in cooperation came in

with you in sharing to resource appropriately the Presbyterian wood resource. The churches.

Well, to resource the churches through what the

Presbyterian were done was

part of the Presbyterian resources for the church. But of course, many times I was involved for a day or two for the local church, but primarily through the through the Presbyterians.

But what do you see as the need for those local churches today?

I'm not being facetious. The Holy Spirit?

Well, that's true for all eternity.

It time when people ask, what are what are they going to do about evangelism? Talking about the notion the church on a national scale and not much they can do about evangelism.

What do you see there in regards to the matter of spirituality and discipleship in this area? Because that's what you're talking about when you talk about the work of the Holy Spirit?

Well, I hear that some things are happening places around the church. I hope it's correct. I was talking just the other day and being in California with a man who was traveling pretty much all over his courage about some of the signs he he sees of, you know, of. The spiritual life developing in the churches and the the spiritual life, which he says will be the the motivation for evangelism because he loves that concern about evangelism, which is just thinking about church statistics and not a parable. So he thinks he sees in Harrisburg.

I can only think he's right. You served as moderator of the Presbyterian Church. Did you were you able to influence the black governing bodies, black churches in any way?

Probably very little. I visited them, but the mad pace of the moderator was such that you just want to hit and run run bases so that I couldn't stay, that I had much less direct influence.

How did you end in and out your experience in the whole United Presbyterian Church and your experience in the church after the merger and out of your experience as moderator? What direction would you see us moving in order to strengthen the former black churches that were in black governing body as they now work in the geographical perimeter?

I don't think that there's any difference in what the black churches need and what the white churches need to look

to integrate churches. I agree with you. Now what do you see? What do you see the total situation now?

Well, I don't I don't know that out to even pretend to answer that question.

I have just

decided the other day to go back through all the materials. I'm now serving on the National Evangelism Unit, so I have all the materials and I want to go back and see how much has been said about prayer because I believe that. Pre and church will be a church coming

alive that you mentioned earlier, the Holy Spirit and I just see those two phase prayer and notice

that they go together they have together. Yeah, and the serious study of the Bible, you know, week sessions with elders on how to look in the book of Contents of the Bible to find a way. Yes, yes. All right. And what would the Bible be? The book is it. We don't. We don't know. It goes to

a matter of teaching, educating and liberating. I mean, this is what you see all of these churches meeting, right? Right. They would focus on the Holy Spirit and prayer and anything else you want to say to us.

Well, just that, I'm going back to the original subject that those schools did a work which was can never be evaluated.

How would you see that their information being used today and through what entity?

Well, it is then hard work. I see it more so in my present context in terms of the schools, the similar schools, the U.S. church. But you pick where you find that scattered across the southeast and they move elsewhere. The leadership of so many of the churches, of the people who went to those schools, and that's where the the continued influence of those schools is at work in the church. People who are

dedicated and you're talking about individuals who are dedicated, trained in theological, biblical thinking, being the people who will try to influence and resource the local church. Right. With the session so that you move back to spirituality and discipleship, right? Undergirded by prayer. And I want to thank you a great deal. I appreciate you taking his time to tell her thank. And we are saying that to the Historical Foundation, and I'm sure they'll find some way to use it. Well, I

think it'd be interesting to find out what the true nature of Tennessee Presbyterian was.

I think that's true. Let me see if we.