Paved with Good Intentions the Road to Racial Unity in the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia Nina Vest Salmon Dissertat
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Paved with Good Intentions The Road to Racial Unity in the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia Nina Vest Salmon Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In ASPECT: Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought Brian Britt, Committee Chair Elizabeth Struthers Malbon Peter Wallenstein Charles E. Walton April 8, 2016 Blacksburg, Virginia Keywords: race, integration, desegregation, double consciousness, hybridity, Episcopal Church, Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, bishop, Marmion Copyright Nina V. Salmon Paved with Good Intentions The Road to Racial Unity in the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia Nina Vest Salmon Abstract for scholarly and general audiences: The Right Reverend William Henry Marmion was consecrated as bishop of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia on May 13, 1954, days prior to the Brown v. Board of Education decision and just over a decade after the Episcopal Church’s General Convention formally opposed racial discrimination. A diocesan conference center in Hungry Mother State Park, purchased soon after his consecration, sparked a controversy that was to smolder and flame for the first decade of Marmion’s 25 years as bishop. Marmion led the move to desegregate the diocesan conference center, Hemlock Haven, in 1958 and subsequently effected integration by closing three of the four black churches in the diocese and inviting members to choose a neighboring church to join. The initial integration of the diocese was a turbulent process that centered around Hemlock Haven. The diocese moved with some difficulty towards racial integration in a microcosm of what was happening in the wider Church and in the United States. Historical documents, secondary sources, interviews, and theoretical understanding of minority responses to oppression help me to describe this time of racial desegregation of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia and its implications. Critical theory gleaned from W. E. B. Du Bois and from Homi Bhabha informs my understanding of some of the implications as well as many of the actions and outcomes. Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness and Bhbaba’s similar term hybridity, both of which acknowledge a dual locus of identity and of power, are relevant to understanding some of the interactions revealed by primary source correspondence. I will focus on Hemlock Haven as the entry point into desegregation and on the black churches in the diocese, both before and after that critical point, adding the witness of black voices to the white narrative of this history. A historical look at the trajectory of race and race relations in the Episcopal Church informs the moment of the caesura—an interruption—the desegregation of Hemlock Haven, and the fate of the four “black churches” in the diocese. From the point of the rupture comes identification, the emergence of a new space, a cultural reboot. Acknowledgements Jerry Salmon Marshall, Patrick, and Harris Salmon Ann Vest My Dissertation Committee: Dr. Brian Britt, Committee Chair; Religion and Culture Chair, Virginia Tech Dr. Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Religion and Culture, Virginia Tech Dr. Peter Wallenstein, History, Virginia Tech Dr. Charles E. Walton, Sociology; Dean, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lynchburg College ASPECT: Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought Dana Stoker Cochran Jordan Hill Alfonso Vergaray Pamela Ann Mullins Seth Bartee Christian Matheis Sascha Engel Holly Jordan Francois Debrix Tamara Sutphin Bill Lindsay Elizabeth Lipscomb Nancy and Nick Moga The Rev. Scott West and Christ Church, Blacksburg The Rev. Emily and Chris Lukanich Mark Furlow Bishop Mark Bourlakas The Bourlakas family Bishop Heath Light The staff at Evans House Lynn Robertson Kate Garcia Alan Boyce Joy Bird Jim Robertson Jonathan Harris Connor Gwin iii Lynchburg College Amy Merrill Willis Rich Burke Beth Packert Chidsey Dickson David Freier Judy Strang Jim Owens Nick Frank Joe Aldinger The Rev. Dr. Diane Vie The Rev. Todd Vie The Rev. Emily Edmondson and Christ Church, Marion The Rev. Wilson Brown and St. John’s, Bedford All who participated in Oral History interviews Gloria Cannady Gloria Cardwell Patricia Dabney Tempy Davis Delores Haythe Michael Terry Bill Vickers Rhetta Watkins Helen Witt Ann van de Graaf St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lynchburg The Smart Women Readers Pat Bradbury Patty Byrd Marge Freeman Lisa Hancock Mary Katherine McIntosh Ellen Nygaard Ann van de Graaf Anitra Webster Peggy Whitaker Virginia Tech Special Collections Library Christ Church Foundation Scholarship, Christ Episcopal Church, Charlotte, NC Delta Kappa Gamma, Scholarship Phi Kappa Phi, Love of Learning Award Grant iv Table of Contents Introduction and Overview p. 1 Chapter 1: Black Church, White America p. 11 Chapter 2: Race and the Episcopal Church: An Archival Narrative of Four Black Churches in Southwestern Virginia: p. 28 St. Philip’s (Bedford), 1855 p. 48 Chapel of the Good Shepherd (Lynchburg), 1899 p. 75 St. Luke’s (Roanoke), 1914 p. 99 St. Paul’s (Martinsville), 1942 p. 106 Chapter 3: Integration: The Caesura—Hemlock Haven—1957 to 1959 p. 119 Chapter 4: Unintended Consequences p. 149 St. Philip’s, Bedford p. 158 Chapel of the Good Shepherd, Lynchburg p. 169 St. Luke’s, Roanoke p. 185 St. Paul’s, Martinsville p. 197 Chapter 5: Conclusion: Minding the Gap p. 203 Appendix A: Questionnaire Results p. 225 Appendix B: Parochial Report Data p. 226 Appendix C: Virginia Theological Seminary Journal p. 227 Appendix D: Oral Histories p. 232 References p. 306 v Introduction and Overview Nowhere does W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness” unwind quite so sharply as it does in regard to the African-American church experience. Double consciousness, the dual marker of identification that American blacks must bear of belonging both to a nation and to a people—and of “looking at one’s self through the eyes of others” 1 —creates not an enriched experience or a multivalent one, but rather one of “unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body.”2 A slight variation of his term “double consciousness” is Du Bois’s use of the terms “double life” and “self consciousness.” Brought on by a heritage of enslavement, this double life is “fatal to self confidence”3 and leads to “a peculiar wrenching of the soul, a peculiar sense of doubt and bewilderment.”4 Du Bois makes the bold assertion that the result of the bifurcated soul of the “American Negro” afflicts religiosity in one of two ways, resulting in either radicalism or hypocrisy.5 These dual threads are interesting binaries to use to explore the organization of religion in America. As evidenced by the trajectory from the early role of the church in “Christianizing” slaves to Klan burnings of black churches and today’s most recent example of a mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, religion and race are inexorably intertwined. A subsequent exploration that examines these binaries and the movement away from them and from others will invite a discussion of modernity and the postmodern era, which is ultimately relevant when examining the movement of religious institutions. This dissertation aims to locate the apparatus of the culture in which the ensuing 1 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903, Reprint (Oxford, MS: Oxford University Press, 2009), 6. 2 Ibid., 6. 3 Ibid., 89. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., 89-90. 1 exploration is embedded. Theoretical looking glasses offered by Du Bois and contemporary cultural theorist Homi Bhabha,6 along with shifts in ideology and praxis and truths about the inherent nature of human beings, contribute to this small snapshot that is at once complex and remarkably similar to histories of integration that exist throughout America’s past. Religion and race infuse American identity and are embedded in American culture. This dissertation emerged from an interest in the controversy over racial integration in the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia. Born in the 1960s, I am the product of an era that was knee-deep7 in racial strife. As the daughter of an Episcopal bishop, I was immersed in a world that was struggling to maintain a steady moral center and edge ever closer to what America’s founding fathers named as a core value—equality—and what the Episcopal Church claims as a tenet—the dignity of every human being.8 From a vantage point on the periphery, I was shaped and formed as one deeply committed to the quest for equality and informed by the church’s intent for integrity. Figure 1 presents a watercolor painted by Kemper Dobbins, who was a parishioner at Christ Episcopal Church in Roanoke where my father was rector from 1968 to 1973. 6 Bhabha is Harvard’s Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities. 7 Echoing Homi Bhabha, “On Global Memory: Thoughts on the Barbaric Transmission of Culture,” Townsend Center for the Humanities’ Forum on the Humanities and the Public World, UC Berkeley, April 2014, Audio podcast. 8 From the Baptismal Covenant, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1979), 305. 2 Figure 1: Hemlock Haven, by Kemper Dobbins, 1969.9 Seated in the rocking chair on the porch is Bishop Marmion. My brother and I are in the foreground, peering into a fishbowl. I remember this setting well. It was here that my father played the guitar and sang with teenagers at countless youth and family conferences. We made lanyards, played softball, slept in cabins, and trekked through the woods of Hungry Mother State Park in the far western region of Virginia. What I do not remember are any discussions or controversies over race or integration. My child’s gaze was focused inward, perhaps into the fishbowl that was in front of me in the painting.