Daily Demonstrators Shearer, Tobin Miller Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Shearer, Tobin Miller. Daily Demonstrators: The Civil Rights Movement in Mennonite Homes and Sanctuaries. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.482. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/482 [ Access provided at 28 Sep 2021 14:36 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Daily Demonstrators Young Center Books in Anabaptist & Pietist Studies Donald B. Kraybill, Series Editor GH Daily Demonstrators The Civil Rights Movement in Mennonite Homes and Sanctuaries Tobin Miller Shearer z The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2010 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2010 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shearer, Tobin Miller, 1965– Daily demonstrators : the Civil Rights Movement in Mennonite homes and sanctuaries / Tobin Miller Shearer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-8018-9700-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-8018-9700-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Mennonite Church—History—20th century. 2. Civil rights—Religious aspects—Mennonite Church—History—20th century. 3. Race relations—Religious aspects—Mennonite Church—History—20th century. 4. General Conference Mennonite Church—History—20th century. 5. Civil rights—Religious aspects— General Conference Mennonite Church—History—20th century. 6. Race relations— Religious aspects—General Conference Mennonite Church—History—20th century. 7. Civil rights movements—United States—History—20th century. I. Title. bx8129.m5s54 2010 289.7'7308996073—dc22 2009052702 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible. All of our book papers are acid-free, and our jackets and covers are printed on paper with recycled content. Contents Preface vii chapter 1. A Separated History 1 chapter 2. Prayer-Covered Protest 29 chapter 3. Fresh Air Disruption 62 chapter 4. Vincent Harding’s Dual Demonstration 98 chapter 5. The Wedding March 130 chapter 6. Congregational Campaign 160 chapter 7. The Manifesto Movement 190 chapter 8. A New Civil Rights Story 221 Appendix. Interview Subjects 251 Notes 253 Bibliography 329 Index 345 This page intentionally left blank Preface We want you to come and learn to love white people. —Nettie Taylor, African-American head usher, Bethesda Mennonite, St. Louis, 1957, when asked if “colored people” were welcome in a church with a white pastor Shifting from the Streets and Sidewalks n a conversation with a white Mennonite leader in 1959, Martin Luther King Jr. asked, “Where have you Mennonites been?”1 King’s theological studies made him aware of Mennonites’ long-term com- mitmentI to peacemaking, their racially egalitarian pronouncements, and their sacrificial efforts to bring about justice in the United States and throughout the world. King posed his question because he was looking for resources, both theological and human, to further the work of demon- strating for civil rights. Mennonites seemed like a logical group to join him in protest on the streets and sidewalks. Unbeknown to King, a small but identifiable group of Mennonites had been demonstrating for some time. They did so, however, in a manner King did not then recognize. They demonstrated at home and inside the church. The five adults who gathered at Bethesda Mennonite Church in St. Louis on a Sunday morning in November 1957 were taking part in a civil rights demonstration (see figure P.1). Rather than marching with protest viii G preface H Fig. P.1 Nettie Taylor, Susie Smith, June Schwartzentruber, Louis Gray, and Rowena Lark, Bethesda Mennonite Church, St. Louis, November 1957 St. Louis Argus, November 29, 1957, 2C. Photo courtesy of St. Louis Argus, St. Louis, MO signs, the five Mennonites held open bibles and Sunday school quarterlies. They did not need to carry placards to attract public attention: a reporter from the St. Louis Argus, one of the country’s oldest black newspapers, was writing a profile of their interracial fellowship. Like most observers of the civil rights movement, the reporter did not identify these Bethesda mem- bers as civil rights demonstrators. Even as he featured their fellowship, he failed to see the meeting as a deliberate action taken to disrupt the status quo. As the focused attention of June Schwartzentruber, Louis Gray, and Rowena Lark made evident, the carefully staged photo sent the message that an African-American woman like Nettie Taylor could command au- thority in an intimate, interracial gathering. The members of this Sunday school class thus took part in a civil rights demonstration, an organized event meant to disrupt the lives of a wider audience to bring about an in- tegrated society. Their demonstration inside the church confronted those on the outside with an image of integration achieved. The photo of this integrated Sunday school class thus represents Daily Demonstrators’ thesis. Civil rights demonstrations that took place in the streets have received significant attention. In the intimate settings of homes and churches, a different kind of civil rights demonstration took place, one that challenged racial segregation in a less dramatic way. By ex- G preface H ix amining the actions, beliefs, programs, and pronouncements of Mennonite groups like the Bethesda congregation from 1935 through 1971, this book shows how relationships, communal boundaries, cultural practices, and core religious convictions contributed to societal change. It does so by at- tending to the actions of Mennonites in their living rooms and meeting- houses. In those intimate, sacred locations, the slow, often contradictory process of religiously motivated, interpersonal exchange made possible a historic transition in post–World War II American society. In Daily Demonstrators I explore new sites that expand our understand- ing of demonstration to include off-street action. By shifting attention to less public but no less significant environs, I show how racial change un- folded as co-believers took communion, sat down to dinner, and discussed marriages. Rather than sites of escape from the civil rights movement, liv- ing rooms and sanctuaries become arenas of racial agitation. Those who ventured across racial lines in intimate settings displayed courage equal to that of demonstrators who faced fire hoses and attack dogs. Children who traveled hours to stay in rural homes with strangely dressed white people braved unknown dangers as real to them as southern sheriffs were to voter registration workers in Mississippi. The pastor who faced down livid con- gregants after inviting an African-American preacher to his pulpit showed as much daring as students who faced down restaurant owners after sit- ting at a lunch counter. Demonstrators in sanctuaries and on sidewalks thus look surprisingly similar. All took risks, challenged assumptions, and longed for an egalitarian future. This church history of the civil rights era brings together home and congregation to show how religious practice in intimate environments interacted with higher-profile movements. Because demonstrations on the streets and sidewalks attracted so much more attention, this intimate, religious form of demonstration remains largely absent from studies of the civil rights era. Historians, social move- ment theorists, and contemporary activists study the thousands who dem- onstrated for racial justice to gain fresh insight into mechanisms of change. Scholars and organizers alike examine the charismatic leaders, campaign strategies, political maneuvers, and organizational resources that encour- aged so many to march.2 The firefighters who hosed demonstrators off sidewalks in Birmingham, the police dogs that attacked activists on the streets of the same city, and the state troopers who bludgeoned marchers on the road to Selma offer high drama that further fixes historians’ atten- tion on cement surfaces. x G preface H The story of the civil rights movement also unfolded, however, in car- peted sanctuaries and living rooms. By wearing the distinctive costume of her religious community to worship services, Rowena Lark, the African- American Mennonite woman pictured on the right in figure P.1, coun- tered the assumption that only white people could be Mennonite. June Schwartzentruber, in the middle of the same photo, modeled new ways of relating across racial lines when she sought the counsel of African Ameri- cans while sitting in their living rooms. Over meals at the dining table, Nettie Taylor, the object of Lark’s and Schwartzentruber’s attention, along with her children and other African-American youth, prompted white church members to rethink their racial stereotypes. Bethesda mem- bers and their allies challenged their white co-believers to pay racial repa- rations as they preached on Sunday morning. These intimate civil rights demonstrations