“Born Of Conviction” with Joe Reiff

Shownotes:

Mississippi’s history with slavery, segregation, and racism has deep roots, and has caused--and continues to cause--immense turmoil and violence. We like to think we’ve moved past it, but we haven’t. There is still work to do, and we can begin that work by looking to the leaders of the past, and take to heart what Jesus has tried, over and over again, to teach us.

Today’s guest helps us grapple with that history, and shares the story of a group of Methodist ministers who took a stand against racism and segregation in the 1960s. Joe Reiff, retired professor of religion at Emory & Henry College and ordained United Methodist minister, is the author of Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi’s Closed Society. This book tells the story of 28 white Methodist pastors who wrote a letter in response to white resistance to the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Their action against racism in the Mississippi Methodist church held consequences for them, as well as for white and Black Methodists in the state. 

The signers of Born of Conviction were:

Jerry Furr

Maxie D. Dunnam

Jim L. Waits

O. Gerald Trigg

James B. Nicholson

Buford A. Dickinson

James S. Conner

J. W. Holston

James P. Rush

Edward W. McRae

Joseph C. Way

Wallace E. Roberts

Summer Walters

Bill Lampton

Marvin Moody

Keith Tonkel

John Ed Thomas 

Inman Moore, Jr.

Denson Napier

Rod Entrekin

Harold Ryker

N. A. Dickson

Ned Kellar 

Powell Hall

Elton Brown

Bufkin Oliver

Jack Troutman

Wilton Carter

Resources:

The full Born of Conviction statement can be found here.

Buy a copy of Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi’s Closed Society here.

Follow Joe on Facebook.

Transcript:

Eddie Rester 00:00 I'm Eddie Rester.

Chris McAlilly 00:02
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.

Eddie Rester 00:04

Some stories need to be told. And that's what today's episode is about. We've got Joe Reiff with us. Joe is professor. He's a retired professor at Emory & Henry. He is not a native Mississippian. I was mistaken. You'll hear that mistake in just a minute. But he wrote a book called "Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi's Closed Society." He tells the story of 28 Methodist pastors who wrote a statement in 1963, calling Christians to be Christians. And then he shares the fallout from that. So, Chris, as you listened to him talk today, what did you hear? What was important for you today?

Chris McAlilly 00:49

Part of the legacy and history of Mississippi is a legacy of race, particularly the white and Black communities. One of the high moments of that, ultimately, conflict was the riots at Ole Miss around James Meredith's admission to the university. And then there are other moments in the story of the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi, the Freedom Summer in 1964 and the Civil Rights Act, that gets signed in '64.

Chris McAlilly 01:30
What we're talking about is the year 1963, and this particular moment. It's the year when Martin Luther King, Jr. writes the letter from the Birmingham Jail. This is probably the most important kind of marker in American history in 1963 in this conversation. Just two or three months before that, there's this letter that signed and, or a letter that's published. And so that's what we're talking about. It's this particular moment in the story that we know really well, but the way in which it plays out in one particular denomination and one particular state with these 28 guys, and they were guys, all of them, who were pastors, who were trying to navigate questions of conscience, questions of faith, in a cultural environment.

Chris McAlilly 02:21

One of the things that Joe said was the chief theological question, I'm going to--I wrote it down, because I wanted to come back to it--who has authority to interpret the Christian tradition in a particular context? What does it mean to be Christian in a particular place and time? That's a live question, and the story that we hear and the conversation that we have today gives you one lens. Itt's really one particular example that you can think about that question with, and I guess that's my takeaway.

Eddie Rester 02:53

Well, and I'm very grateful for Joe writing this book and telling these stories. I was fortunate when I was in Hattiesburg to get to know several of the signers but only discovered, almost in passing, anything about the Born of Conviction statement and what they did, and how it played out for these few of the signers that I got to know. So it's a story. Again, a story that needed to be told. And I think it's a story we need to hear. A lot of lessons for us in that. So I hope you enjoy the episode. Share it. Leave us a review. By the book, "Born of Conviction" by Joe Reiff.

Eddie Rester 03:35

[INTRO] Life can be heavy. We carry around with us the weight of our doubt, our pain, our suffering, our mental health, our family system, our politics. This is a podcast to create space for all of that.

Chris McAlilly 03:47

We want to talk about these things with humility, charity, and intellectual honesty. But more than that, we want to listen. It's time to open up our echo chamber. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]

Eddie Rester 04:02

Well, we're here today with Joe Reiff. Joe is a native Mississippian. He's a professor but he's also a writer. And we're just thankful, Joe, you're spending a little time with us today.

Joe Reiff 04:14 Good to be here.

Chris McAlilly 04:16
Joe, where were... I'm sorry. That's my fault.

Eddie Rester 04:19
No. Chris, you go ahead and take it. You know.

Chris McAlilly 04:21

I know. I know. I jumped in, so excited. Joe, where are you now? I know that you retired after a career in teaching. Where are you now? Are you back in Mississippi? Or you live? Where do you reside?

Joe Reiff 04:35
I live in Abingdon, Virginia, which is 15 minutes from the Emory & Henry College campus, and that's where I taught for 30 years. And Emory & Henry is the United Methodist school.

Eddie Rester 04:49
Are you still doing some teaching there? I know you're professor.

Joe Reiff 04:52
No. No, I am not. You know I'm enjoying retirement.

Chris McAlilly 05:00
Your roots are in Mississippi. Before you moved up that direction. Tell us just a little bit about growing up in Mississippi, I know that your father was a professor.

Joe Reiff 05:14

That's right. Eddie's already made a mistake. I am not a native Mississippi. I was born in Texas when my dad was finishing seminary and then live the first six years of my life in Connecticut, where he was doing a PhD in New Testament at Yale. We moved to Mississippi for Dad to teach at Millsaps College in 1960 when I was six years old, so I started school there. And we, so I grew up there, went elsewhere to college at first but then I finished at Millsaps, met my wife there. She and I went to seminary together at Emory and served churches, two years in Kemper County and three years in Jackson, and then moved back to Atlanta for me to do a PhD. And I started teaching at Emory & Henry in 1990.

Eddie Rester 06:17
Just one quick pause there, Chris and Cody--Cody's our produce--just for the listener, very excited that I got called out on being wrong about something today.

Chris McAlilly 06:27
I was not going to take... That was a softball that Joe pitch my way and I did not take it. I passed.

Eddie Rester 06:33
I could see it in your eyes.

Joe Reiff 06:35
And by the way, only one of the reasons I mentioned that is because...

Chris McAlilly 06:40
You mean Eddie's mistakes?

Joe Reiff 06:41

That well, the native Mississippian thing that actually relates to "Born of Conviction," because in the statement they refer to themselves as native Mississippians. And they all had basically grown up in Mississippi, but I think it was four that were actually not born in Mississippi. They were born elsewhere.

Eddie Rester 07:03

But well, you set it up for us a few years ago, Joe. You wrote a great book, "Born of Conviction: White Methodists in Mississippi's Closed Society." And it's a book about a statement a group of United Methodist--well, they weren't United Methodists. They were just Methodist. It was pre- 1968--made. And so set that up for our listeners a little bit. Tell us kind of the moment. I know it was right after the riot at Ole Miss. Setup the moment and what the statement was, who signed it. Kind of give us a little history lesson on this.

Joe Reiff 07:37

I would say that the statement in general terms was a response to the massive, white massive resistance to the civil rights movement in Mississippi. And it was also, I think, a response to an assumption that most white folks in Mississippi made and that was that virtually all white people, certainly all white people that had any sense, agreed with segregation wanted it to stay that way, and believed it was the best for all involved. And you know, what some historians have said in recent years, is that we could refer to this as kind of a religion of white supremacy.

Joe Reiff 08:33

Specifically, though, these ministers wrote, four of them, wrote a statement in response to the riot on the Ole Miss campus on September 30 of '62 mainly because they were frustrated that none of the leaders in the white Mississippi Conference, which at that time was the southern half of the state, had said anything in response to it. There were some ministers in Oxford, not just Methodists, who had issued a call for repentance after the riot, and a star in the crown of the North Mississippi conference--that was a white conference then--cabinet, they actually published something in the Mississippi Methodist Advocate, affirming that call to repentance.

Joe Reiff 09:30

But nobody in the Mississippi Conference said anything like that. So these ministers decided, "We've got to say something." And, you know, I want to just share one of the first statements because there's a couple of things I want to emphasize. So I'm going to read this: "Confronted with the grave crises..." Oh, and I should say they wrote it in October, got 28 folks signed it all together. It wasn't published till January second of '63.

Eddie Rester 10:02
And it was published in Methodist Advocate.

Joe Reiff 10:04

In the Mississippi Methodist advocate, which was the Conference newspaper. I should say the white newspaper. The Central Jurisdiction Methodists had their own newspaper at that time. So anyway, the statements began," Confronted with the grave crises precipitated by racial discord within our state in recent months," that's a reference, of course, to the riot at Ole Miss, "and the genuine dilemma facing persons of Christian conscience, we're compelled to voice publicly our convictions. Indeed, as Christian ministers, and as native Mississippians." There's that native Mississippian language, "sharing the anguish of all our people, we have a particular obligation to speak."

Joe Reiff 10:58

Now that genuine dilemma statement, I think the folks who wrote this understood that for probably the vast majority of white Mississippians, there wasn't any dilemma. You know, it was segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. But they also knew that there was a minority of white Methodists in Mississippi who were really suffering with this, that they didn't feel like they could say anything. But they were really struggling with this. So you know, and I think the point of "native Mississippians" was, it was really easy to dismiss what somebody from out of state might say. But I think they believed, and I think they were right to an extent, that it was harder to ignore what your pastor said about this.

Joe Reiff 12:05

And then, you know, "the anguish of all our people." And again, I think they knew there was this anguish, in a minority of folks in the Methodist Church or the white Methodist Church in Mississippi. But I think they were also cognizant of something that wise leader in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer used to say, which was that the situation in our state did spiritual harm to Black folks, of course, but it also did spiritual harm to white folks. And so I think that they were, you know, that they knew that there was this anguish going on. It went in all sorts of directions.

Joe Reiff 12:57

So then basically, the statement called for four things, and it seems very mild now. But given the context, it was fairly radical for white ministers to say this. They call for freedom of the pulpit. In other words, a minister ought to be able to speak their conscience about what was going on in the world. Quoted the Methodist discipline to say the teachings of Jesus do not permit racial discrimination. Expressed support for public schools, you know, we had no, oh, well, James Meredith was the first African American to go to any white school in Mississippi then. And, you know, the fear was that once desegregation came, that the state legislature was going to close the schools and use state funds for all white private schools and that sort of thing. So they were, you know, expressing support for keeping the public schools open. And they finally expressed their opposition to communism, which seems kind of funny now, but during the Cold War, you know, anybody that expressed anything outside of the norm could be called a communist, and they were, often, in those days in Mississippi. So.

Joe Reiff 12:57
Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead and finish.

Joe Reiff 13:02

Well, the only other thing I was gonna say was, so this was published in early January, and it caused a firestorm of controversy in the Methodist Church, the white Methodist Church in Mississippi, but also in the press in general in Mississippi. And, you know, I may say a little more about that, but then in other words, these 28 ministers got in trouble.

Eddie Rester 14:45

And your book begins to tell their stories. I mean, you did a lot of interviews and a lot of one-on- ones, and really, I'm thankful for that because I got to know some of these men before they passed away Rod Entrekin, actually, one of the signers, was a part of the church in Hattiesburg where I was. One of my favorite human beings ever: mild, loving, kind. And one day he brought me a file folder. And in that file, I didn't know anything about this. And in that file folder was a copy of the Born of Conviction statement. And he had to explain to me, this is 1999, 2000, somewhere in there. He had to explain to me what this was all about. In his Rod Entrekin way, he left a lot of holes in the story. But you got to know a lot of these signers. So tell us a little bit of the fallout. Some of them stayed in the ministry, someone left the state. Kind of, what happened to all of them?

Joe Reiff 15:48

So in the month of January 1963, there were three of the 28 signers who were basically kicked out of their churches. That's a little dicey in one particular case, which I've tried to go into in the book, but for all practical purposes, three of them kicked out immediately. One of them was in the Neshoba County. And, but there were others who, you know, were ostracized in their churches.

Joe Reiff 16:23

There was, one of the signers, Joe Way, was at church and Lauderdale County that doesn't exist anymore. And a Sunday or two after the statement, two or three weeks after the statement came out, they got home from church one Sunday, and their three-year-old daughter just burst into tears and just could not be consoled, and they were trying to figure out what's going on. And she finally said, "Nobody loves us anymore." You know, preachers' kids pick up on that, you know, on the tone, the emotion of what's going on in the church, and she was only three, but she knew it.

Joe Reiff 17:08

So, you know what ended up happening was that over about a year and a half, about two thirds of them left Mississippi. In the final count, only eight stayed in Mississippi. The other 20 left. A couple of them came back. Actually three of them came back eventually. But most of them left.

Chris McAlilly 17:37

Was there anything that tied the group together in terms of their training, their formation, their past, their background? What was it? Was there anything that you picked up on in the research?

Joe Reiff 17:52
Yes, well, one thing you can say is that all but one of them went to seminary, and seminary education was becoming more the norm by that time among ministers in the conference, but it wasn't yet completely the norm. And many of them, I spent a whole chapter on this, the second chapter of the book, I talk about sort of their backgrounds, and their family and growing up in church, in college and seminary and in their early pastoral experience. And I think the maybe one of the things that tie them all together was that in some way, each one of them had begun to struggle with the realities of life in Mississippi and saw it as wrong.

Eddie Rester 18:49
As you think about it, and I know that some of the eight who stayed, like Rod. Rod left the local church and went to work at a mental health institution here in the state.

Joe Reiff 19:01 Rght.

Eddie Rester 19:02
For the ones who remained in Mississippi in the Methodist Church, what did their career paths look like? How did they kind of... How did that sort out for them?

Joe Reiff 19:15

In two cases, N.A. Dickson and John Ed Thomas, ultimately it didn't penalize them. Those two became District Superintendents. I think that in N.A.'s case, a lot of that had to do with just sheer ability but also because he and Bishop Pendergrass, who came in 1964, really hit it off. They were very similar in a lot of ways. And I think Bishop Pendergrass recognized N.A.'s leadership ability. In John Ed's case, he was, you know, he signed the statement in his first year out of seminary when he was an his associate pastor at Gulfport First, and he stuck with it. He had some rough times but he also sort of rose to the top.

Joe Reiff 20:10

But I think there were a couple of others, which for instance, I talk a little bit in chapter nine about how James Conner, one of the older signers, was penalized in terms of the appointments that he had, to an extent. And there was a point in the 70s when N.A. Dickson was on the cabinet and tried to convince Bishop Stokes that James Conner wouldn't be a good District Superintendent. And Bishop Stokes agreed, but said the problem is it would be too much of a jump for him salary wise, because he'd been penalized.

Joe Reiff 20:48

I think Elton Brown also was penalized a little bit. Although one of the things I point out, in 1985, the pastor at Jefferson Street Church in Natchez was convicted of embezzling some general church funds when he had been on the cabinet. And they had a real problem there. And Elton Brown's the one that Conference turned to go and set that ship right. And he did. And he even told me, he said, when he first arrived at Jefferson Street, one of the signers of Born of Conviction, Summer Walters, was associate at Jefferson Street when the statement came out. So here we are 22 years later, and Elton arrives at Jefferson Street Church, and he said more than one person said to him, "We remember that you signed that statement, and it's okay."

Joe Reiff 21:28 Wow. 22 years later.

Joe Reiff 21:58 Yeah. Yeah.

Eddie Rester 21:59
It's amazing. Go ahead, Chris.

Chris McAlilly 22:02

No, I was just gonna ask, for folks who are not, you know, perhaps not familiar with the inner workings of Methodism in Mississippi, or Methodism in general, set this in a slightly larger context. So you mentioned the riots. Ultimately, in '64, you have the Civil Rights Act, I guess. And, you know, one of the other points of contact that you make in the larger kind of American conversation is the letter from the Birmingham Jail, that would have happened, you know, within a matter of months.

Joe Reiff 22:37
Three months after Born of Conviction. Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 22:39
Yeah. So just set just set in a slightly larger context, especially for folks who, you know, are trying to think about this in light of the larger American conversation.

Joe Reiff 22:50

Well, one of the struggles I had in writing the book was how do I get us into this? And ultimately, I decided, the way to start in the introduction was to go to the letter from Birmingham Jail, because Martin Luther King famously says in there that he's most disappointed with the white church and the white moderate. Because, you know, he thought the white church would support the movement, and it hadn't. Same thing with white moderate. And so I mentioned all that. And then I said, you know, three months earlier, there was a case in Mississippi, where at least some representatives of the white church and white liberals and moderates did try in a mild sort of way to be supportive of the Civil Rights Movement. And this is what happened to them.

Joe Reiff 23:53

And this is the place for me to say, I always take real care to say, by no means do I see the signers of the Born of Conviction statement as on the same plane with the folks who worked in Civil Rights Movement. They did not... I mean, the signers suffered some consequences, but they didn't take the kind of risks that folks did in the movement, etc. Is that enough, Chris? Or do you want a little more?

Chris McAlilly 24:28
No, I think that's helpful. You know, I'm just trying to kind of remember some of the history. So the Freedom Summer, that happens...

Chris McAlilly 24:38 In '64.

Chris McAlilly 24:39 Yeah, so I mean...

Joe Reiff 24:41
A year and a half after the Warren Commission came out.

Chris McAlilly 24:45

Yeah. I know bits and pieces of the story, but just as a native Mississippian, you know, it's not clear in my in my memory. So what all, what were some of the other things that happened in '63, just in the larger Civil Rights Movement?

Joe Reiff 25:03

Medgar Evers was assassinated in June of '63, two days after some African Americans were turned away from Galloway Church and Jerry Furr, one of the creators of the Born of Conviction statement had resigned from Galloway. All through the first part of '63 was the Jackson boycott, the Jackson movement was boycotting stores in Jackson to try to get some sort of action. Then the church visits campaign, which I've already referred, you know, Blacks or integrated groups started trying going to white churches. So there's all that.

Joe Reiff 25:50

I mean, one of the ways I like to think about this is the Born of Conviction statement came really at the height of the resistance on the part of white folks to the civil rights movement. In Mississippi, from '62 to '64, from Meredith through Freedom Summer, I think is the height of the conflict. I mean, not that it goes away before after, but it was... So, you know, this was a time of huge tension.

Chris McAlilly 26:25

It's one of the things I guess, that we sometimes talk about, in our cultural moment at the moment, in 2022, when we're recording this, we think of this as a very tense moment. Or at least I think of it that way, sometimes, but, you know, in some ways, it just pales in comparison to what was happening in the nation in in the 1960s. I mean, that's, it's just intense to think about that cultural moment.

Eddie Rester 26:55

And I think we forget. I went to Ole Miss from '89 to '93. And we heard the name James Meredith, when he integrated Ole Miss, but there was no conversation about the riot whatsoever. I mean, I went there. I was involved at Ole Miss for four years. And no conversation about the riot. When I got to Hattiesburg, I was part of a group that that worked on the Freedom Summer Trail in Hattiesburg, but had never heard of Freedom Summer. And I think sometimes there's, for us, there's this gap. And maybe it's because, in high school and college, history classes never got past World War Two for us, and you would run out of time, and you wouldn't get past the world wars.

Eddie Rester 27:40

But yeah, there's this real intense tension and violence and anger, that wasn't just bubbling beneath the surface, it was on the surface. It was on the news, every single night. And I think we lose that sometimes. And even though, you know, again, like you said at the beginning, that the statement that they made the Born of Conviction statement, you read it today, and we're gonna put it in the show notes for everybody. But you just kind of shrug your shoulders at it. That got people fired up? It did.

Joe Reiff 28:15

And, you know, to connect to what Chris said and what you just said, but one comment I'll make is a way of connecting that 60 years ago now to today, and really anytime, I think the theological question that got raised was who has authority to interpret the Christian tradition in context, to propose an answer to, "what would Jesus do in this situation?" And you know, what does it mean to be Christian in a particular time and place?

Joe Reiff 28:52

And I think all of the signers understood themselves as having been ordained. The ordination service back then, when the bishop laid hands on you, the bishop would say, "Take thou authority to preach the Word." Well, that part of the what they understood their calling to be, of course, the vast majority of their parishioners disagreed. But that was part of that conflict.

Chris McAlilly 29:19

Doesn't it, it feels like a maybe a slightly different context. I mean, I think if I'm thinking back to, particularly in kind of more progressive or liberal, it kind of the strains of theological education that were happening in, I guess, post World War Two, you have this kind of public authority as a pastor in that cultural moment to be a spokesperson of the gospel in the public square. I do feel...

Chris McAlilly 29:23
Especially if you're Protestant. I mean, we still have kind of the effective Protestant

establishment although it's starting to die out by the early 60s

Chris McAlilly 30:01

That does see, I mean, I do think pastors have authority in their communities to speak on behalf of the Christian tradition and to speak moral authority, but does feel like a different moment.What do you think, Eddie? I mean, how do you feel about that? I mean, I know that it's... How do you...

Eddie Rester 30:18

I think that's right. Yeah. I think, in some ways, particularly Protestant pastors back then, I mean, it was the Methodists were still the big, they were the big denomination, in the early 60s. They had built the big buildings. They had the colleges and the universities and the hospitals and so you know, my sense is that yeah, this was, it was a big moment for 28 Protestant United Methodist--or not, I keep saying, United Methodist. That's 1968. We can get to that later.-- Methodist pastors to speak and they were, what was the age range, Joe, in these pastors? They weren't all...

Joe Reiff 31:00

Yeah, that, it's funny. They were always characterized as young pastors, and most of them were, but you know, James Conner, N.A. Dickson, James Holston, and I'm blanking on the other one right now, were all in their late 40s. And the oldest signer, Harold Ryker, was 56. But one right now, were all in their late 40s. And the oldest signer, Harold Ryker, was 56. But several of them were just out of seminary. I think the average age was like 32, or something like that.

Eddie Rester 31:35

Of the signers is there... I just think of the 28 men. And again, we'll put their names in the show notes. Some of them, if you've been alive awhile, you'll recognize some of the names--Maxie Dunnam, one of them. Is there one of the signers, as you learned the story, that it just stuck with you? Something about their story, who they were, their family, just something that you said, "Gosh, that's the one that I'm thankful I wrote this book for?"

Joe Reiff 32:05

Well, in some sense, I felt that way about all of them. But a couple of examples. You know, I had gotten to know Keith Tonkel when I was a student at Millsaps. I started going to and joined Wells. So he was an important mentor for me. But here's, you know, this gets us into another element of this. The Born of Conviction story, you said you didn't know what it was. Born of Conviction story was buried in Mississippi Conference lore. I heard about it for the first time, and I realize I'm getting off topic here, but I will to get back. I heard about it for the first time in Millsaps College cafeteria in 1975. I heard about it from Sid Conner, son of James Conner, one of the signers, and Jim Matheny, grandson of the Conference Lay Leader JP Stafford, who publicly supported the 28 and was punished for it. So you know, this was a buried story.

Joe Reiff 33:10

And so getting back to stories, you know, you mentioned Rod Entrekin a minute ago. You played a role. And he shared with me a presentation that he had made at Park Place, at Parkway Heights, in 2004. And when he gave it to me, he said, "Eddie Rester asked me to do this," or something like that. That was the first time he had publicly told his story for 40 years. And that just blows me away, that, you know, the men that's in...

Joe Reiff 34:41

So here's one of the elements of this. Most of the people that left the Conference and went elsewhere were celebrated as heroes in other places--in California, in Indiana, et cetera. The ones that stayed, that got buried, you know, that was not something that was talked about.

Joe Reiff 36:32

So yeah, another person that I really enjoyed meeting and talking to quite a bit was Ed McRae, who had grown up in Pascagoula, yeah in Pascagoula. One of the things you said to me was, "Did anybody ever apologize for the way they were treated?" Well, Ed was at Oakland Heights church in Meridian, and that church doesn't exist anymore, but it certainly did when I was the pastor in Mississippi in the 80s. And sometime in the early 80s, early to mid 80s, that church had their 25th anniversary, and Ed had had a real hard time at that church. Some folks had tried to kick him out immediately, but didn't succeed. But they did want him moved in June, and he was. He had a hard time, had, you know, some bad stuff happen.

Joe Reiff 36:32

So 25 years later, well, not quite 25, about 23 years later, he gets invited back to preach at the 25th anniversary service for that church in the 80s. And while he was there, a woman who was still at the church, who had been one of the ringleaders of his opposition in 1963, told him, "We're sorry. We shouldn't have done that to you."

Eddie Rester 36:32 Wow.

Joe Reiff 36:34

And that just blew me away. And another aspect of that, before I went, you know, so I had to go all the way across the country to talk to some of these people, all the way to California. And a couple of months before I made that trip, I interviewed Ed King, Rev. Ed King. Now he was part of the civil rights movement, white Methodist minister, was chaplain Tougaloo College and was one of the leaders in the Mississippi movement. I was talking to Ed, getting all sorts of advice from him. He was telling me stories. One of the things he said to me was, "When you see these folks, as you're going around and interviewing them, tell them thank you from me."

Joe Reiff 36:36

And when I told Ed and Martina McRae that, they were in tears, because one of the things they had said was, you know, Ed had got kicked out of the white conference in 1963, because of his role in the Jackson movement, and having been arrested, and that sort of stuff. So, you know, Ed said, "Gosh, that means so much to me, because I never felt like I was a good enough friend to him in the Conference." He was definitely ostracized in the Conference by the powers that be. And so it meant the world to Ed and Martina to hear that Ed had said that.

Chris McAlilly 37:24

I continue to think about kind of the larger implications of the story or, you know, I mean... I wonder, as you think forward to the memory and legacy, I guess, as a teacher of religious history, what do you think, you know, zooming way, way out, what is the place of memory in the way that we think about who we have been religiously, and then who we are and who we want to be? Connect some of those dots for us. I can try to ask it a different way.

Joe Reiff 38:04

I well, I guess the I think I understand your question. And I guess the best way for me to come at that is to talk a bit about how, again, go back to that buried story. There are things in the history of the Christian faith, in the history of the church as an institution, as a body of believers, that have been buried, that have become dangerous memories, to use Johann Baptiste Metz's phrase, you know, things that we don't want to talk about. And I think, well, I mean, talking about race itself has become a dangerous memory for some folks in this country. They don't want to feel uncomfortable, and so they don't want you to talk about it.

Joe Reiff 38:56

So in the church, I think that the only way to really do justice to our tradition is we have to tell the truth about the past. If we don't, we're lost. And so, you know, for instance, the Mississippi Conference, in 2013, recognized finally, after 50 years, recognized the signers of Born of Conviction, gave them the Emma Elzy Award, which is a race relations award the Conference gives every year--and by the way, Keith Tonkel had won that award six years earlier in 2007. And what struck me then, when the presentation was made, was Born of Conviction wasn't even mentioned. Now that wasn't the fault of the person making the presentation. She didn't know about out, you know.

Joe Reiff 40:02

So the Conference finally recognizes them, and you know, there were, I think only eight of the signers were there. But as we were walking in to the convention center floor that morning for that service, I said to Elton Brown, whom I've known since 1980, I said Elton, "did you," you know, and he's one of the ones that stayed. I said, "Elton, did you ever think you'd see this day?" He said, "No." You know, so. So there was something in that, that finally these folks got recognized and were thanked for something that they were ostracized for 50 years earlier.

Eddie Rester 40:52
Elton Brown, my time in Hattiesburg was a time when all these guys had retired, all the living ones who had stayed.

Joe Reiff 41:02
Yeah. You had Elton, John, Ed, and Rod all in that church.

Eddie Rester 41:05

All. Well, Elton was in Purvis, but I would see him from time to time. He and Rod hung out a lot. And all of them, just such good, good men, and it meant the world for them to finally have that moment. And I think, maybe part of the message is do what's right, and let history take care of itself.

Joe Reiff 41:30

Let me add another story to that. I did a lecture at Millsaps in 2006. And Rod, Elton, and John Ed came. Aubrey Lucas brought them and so they were there. And I didn't say anything about them being there during the lecture. But when I was done, I said, you know, as we started the question period, I said, "And I just want to say that three of the signers are here." And so they got this standing ovation. Well, then when that died down, John Ed raised his hand, and he said, "I appreciate your recognizing us, but we didn't do anything compared to what Eddie King did." All those folks knew Ed King at Millsaps. And he was called Eddie back then. And Ed was there. So you know, but John Ed said, "he's the one," and talk about someone who suffered. I mean, who, you know, had all sorts of difficulties. That was Ed.

Joe Reiff 41:45

So then the folks there gave him an ovation. So I think John, you know, John, Ed was one who always wanted to sort of put that into context and say, okay, yeah, we did this, but we should have done it anyway. You know, Ed and all of the African Americans involved went way, way, way beyond that. Yeah.

Eddie Rester 42:59

Joe, I want to thank you for telling the story. I know you're working on telling another set of stories. And I just want you to briefly mention what you're working on now. Because I think it's another kind of it's in the same thread or same arena in some way. So I'd love to just share a minute about what you're working on.

Joe Reiff 43:18

Yeah, you know, I think that one of the things that's motivated me from a just a Christian faith perspective and a scholarship perspective over the years is the relationship between the Christian faith and the surrounding culture. And so certainly the race issue is that, but another relates to gender. So what I'm working on now is the story of the advent of clergywomen in Mississippi Methodism.

Joe Reiff 43:53

And you might ask, what's a man doing telling that story? Well, I had sort of a vicarious experience of it because my wife was the second woman ordained elder in the old Mississippi Conference. And she was a pastor in Mississippi for five years. So I'm trying to do oral histories with some of those folks, as many as I can get to. And one of the reasons I like, I mean, I'm excited about this project even more is that, in the Born of Conviction thing, I'm mainly talking about the white church. But there's African American women to interview as well. I've talked to a couple, but I'm working on getting the stories of as many of those as I can. Because they had a struggle and still do have a struggle. Yeah. So that's still a long way to go on that. But that's, I'm excited about that. Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 44:57

We're grateful for your time, Joe. Thanks for your scholarship and your work. And, you know, the book. The book is "Born of Conviction," and it's been out for several years now, but it's worth re-engaging. And I think it's an important part of the history of what the white church in Mississippi has been, and it tells an important moment in that trajectory. So we're grateful, man, for your time. Thanks.

Joe Reiff 45:29
I just mailed a copy of the book to Bishop Sharma Lewis today. I thought she might want to

know a little bit about that.

Eddie Rester 45:36
Yeah, absolutely. Joe, thank you for your time. We appreciate you.

Joe Reiff 45:40 Enjoyed it.

Eddie Rester 45:41
We'll talk with you soon, I'm sure.

Joe Reiff 45:42 All right. Take care.

Eddie Rester 45:44
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.

Chris McAlilly 45:53

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]