“OUR GOD IS MARCHING ON”: JAMES HUDSON AND THE THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT By Larry O. Rivers Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History August, 2010 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Michael D. Bess Professor Dennis C. Dickerson Professor Thomas Schwartz Professor Lewis V. Baldwin TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.........................................iii INTRODUCTION...............................................1 Chapter I. THE SACRED CALL.....................................20 II. “WORK AND WAIT”.....................................54 III. THE KINGDOM OF GOD..................................92 IV. “TOWARD WORLD BROTHERHOOD”.........................119 V. “TAKING JESUS SERIOUSLY”...........................171 EPILOGUE.................................................209 BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................234 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation marks the end of a long and challenging journey in my life. I wish to thank the many men and women who helped me along the way. To my father, Larry Eugene Rivers; mother, Betty Jean Hubbard Rivers; and brother, Linjé Eugene Rivers, I am eternally grateful. Dennis C. Dickerson, my advisor, played an instrumental role in every stage of this process. I thank him for his dedication, patience, and insight. I also thank the rest of my dissertation committee members: Lewis V. Baldwin, Michael Bess, and Thomas A. Schwartz. My “Uncle” Canter Brown, Jr. and his wife “Aunt” Barbara Gray Brown were always there for support. I am indebted to Professor Richard J.M. Blackett, who served as the Vanderbilt University Department of History’s director of graduate studies when I applied six years ago and strongly recommended me for admission into the program. Professors Katherine B. Crawford, Elizabeth Lunbeck, William Caferro, Devin Fergus, Jane G. Landers, Brandi C. Brimmer, Moses Ebe Ochonu, William Frank Robinson, and Rowena Olegario all served as sources of encouragement. I appreciate the entire Department of History’s vote of confidence and generous financial support. Fellow graduate iii students Crystal deGregory, Christina Dickerson, Caree Banton, and Selena Sanderfer were always ready to offer kinds words and boost my spirits. I first came across the James Hudson Papers while completing research for a manuscript project at my undergraduate alma mater, Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University (FAMU). I thank University President Frederick S. Humphries and Vice President of University Relations Eddie Jackson for entrusting me with the task of telling the FAMU College of Law’s story, which helped lead me to the James Hudson story. Moreover, I express great gratitude to Elizabeth Murell Dawson, director of FAMU’s Southeastern Regional Black Archives Research Center and Museum. She provided invaluable assistance during the research process for the FAMU law school book, my master’s thesis, and doctoral dissertation. My visit to the Moorland-Springarn Research Center at Howard University was very productive due to the help of Joellen El Bashir, curator of manuscripts, and Clifford L. Muse, Jr., university archivist. I also want to express my appreciation to the staff of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, particularly Director Vita Paladino and Assistant Director for Manuscripts Ryan Hendrickson. iv James Lagarde Hudson selflessly shared his memories and family memorabilia with me. This project would not have been possible without his generosity. I also thank Brodes Hartley, Laura Dixie, Emmett W. Bashful, Charles U. Smith, and the late Cornelius Speed for their recollections. Finally, I want to recognize those who kept me spiritually grounded throughout this trying period in my life. The Rev. James Morris Lawson, Jr. was a constant source of wisdom and inspiration. I’m also grateful to my family at the Fisk University Memorial Chapel led by Dean Jason R. Curry. v INTRODUCTION This dissertation is an intellectual biography of James Hudson (1903-1980), a black minister and philosopher of religion. It focuses on his contributions to the theological foundation of the American Civil Rights Movement. Hudson viewed his call to the ministry as a charge to close the gap between social facts and spiritual realities. The social fact of segregation divided him from whites and relegated him and other blacks to second-class citizenship. An amputated right arm – a result of the shoddy medical treatment blacks had received in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama – became his most poignant daily reminder of the cruel inequalities he constantly confronted. Hudson’s upbringing in a loving family and the black church, however, led him to believe that manmade divisions were incompatible with the spiritual realities rooted in a universal moral order. According to Hudson, God had instilled sacred value in every human being and connected all peoples to a common humanity. This view of spiritual reality, which Hudson refined through his study of the philosophy of Personalism, shaped his perception of Jesus Christ and the purpose of religion. To Hudson, Jesus’ greatest gift to the world was his vision for a 1 Kingdom of God, a society which merged social facts and spiritual realities. Those who wanted to follow Jesus must thus, adhere to his example of fighting evil with what Hudson called “militant reconciling love.” This love, characterized by sacrifice and nonviolence, was best demonstrated by Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem on what Christians celebrate as Palm Sunday, knowing that death awaited him. That Jerusalem journey led to Jesus’ suffering on the cross and triumphal resurrection. When Hudson preached on this topic, he often referred to the line “Our God is Marching On” from the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Hudson’s life’s work centered on teaching men and women to “march on” with Jesus by battling social evil with love-based, nonviolent methods that healed the human family.1 Emerging out of Hudson’s theological and philosophical grounding was an ironclad commitment to rid American society of legalized segregation and discrimination. His emphasis on reconciling social facts with spiritual realities required activism in an emerging civil rights struggle aimed at the destruction of Jim Crow through a militant application of love and nonviolence. Tallahassee, Florida became the principle venue in which he pursued these objectives. In church, campus, and community 2 organizations, Hudson – along with students, professors, pastors, parishioners, and rank-and-file activists – helped invigorate a successful local movement for black equality. Throughout his tenure as Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University’s (FAMU) chaplain, Hudson connected Tallahassee to a powerful network of black religious intellectuals that, with his avid participation, built a “freedom curriculum” which systematized a militant nonviolent Jesus concept. By teaching from this curriculum, he inspired local students and churchgoers to engage in noncooperation against segregation, beginning with the 1956 Tallahassee Bus Boycott. The Inter-Civic Council (ICC) Hudson and others subsequently founded to coordinate this protest, which followed the lead of similar boycott organizations in Baton Rouge and Montgomery, became an integral part of what sociologist Aldon Moris called the “institutional soil from which the [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] would emerge.” Furthermore, as a widely read Personalist philosopher whose writings reached millions of black Baptists on the eve of the Civil Rights Movement, Hudson laid a critical foundation for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s subsequent entry onto the national stage.2 3 By examining Hudson, this study aims to add to a small but growing body of literature about the movement’s ideational foundations. During the late 1970s, social history trends entered the field of Civil Rights Movement scholarship. These studies challenged the popular perception that national-level personalities were the key historical actors who shaped social change. Instead, reflecting social history’s emphasis on local citizens, scholars began investigating how the movement transpired in individual communities. Currently, historians focus on local crusades against Jim Crow and the “long civil rights movement,” but are paying closer attention to the role of ideas in these struggles. In particular, scholars are examining what language, moral standards, and intellectual sources people used when they challenged or defended segregation. The Hudson narrative illustrates how ideas helped mobilize Tallahassee’s black community and large numbers of black Baptist churchgoers across the South to engage in organized, nonviolent resistance against second- class citizenship.3 Formative Foundations Hudson’s background sheds critical light on his development into an activist. Born in 1903 to a railway 4 worker father and school teacher mother in Birmingham, Alabama, he encountered two major hardships early in life: physical disability and racial discrimination. At six years of age, Hudson lost his right arm to amputation after a playground accident fractured it. He was also conscious of segregation in Birmingham’s schools, stores, and public facilities. Hudson made a childhood commitment to overcome both these obstacles. He learned how to function independently – teaching himself how to write, dress himself, and even drive