Well I was immediately given the assignment. I was organizing as JPC was
melt as head I had about a half a dozen people or more working with me.
A year and a half we lost, but it was day and night visiting with
workers homes. Therefore you needed some for instance in Rock Hill I was
organizing Kenneth Fithrith of the Rock Hill Presbyterian church wanted
me to come in as a member in 1948- or 1947. His assession told him that
they didn't really want me and to go to a labor church in Covent,
blaming that I was a communist anyway. And I would be more at home with
those textile folks down the way. And I discovered later that Kenneth
put his job on the line for me and Alice. And eventually I became the
leader of the young adults bible class and was quite respectable in that
place where the Maloniers, my opponents during the week. So I think that
was one connection. Second, I had a lot of, my wife was the National
Chairman of the Student Christian Movement from 40-42 and out of that
came a lot of connections like Maynard Ketchins and Herb King. Some of
the YM and the YW leaders of the south were involved so that is another
door that opened up to us. That was sort of the past into the present
situation in the south.
I think the ability to get away to the conference or the way to think
through what I was trying to do, seizing up my opposition and generally
it was organized church. I wrote that pamphlet it is somewhere in my
file which used by social action on I wrote some education material on
the whole question of what is the church and what is the relationship.
As my writings the Liston Pope's book on No Town of Preachers was almost
well I was a close friend of Liston. And he helped me a lot understand.
C.J. Cash's book The Mind of the South which I considered a classic it
helped me a lot of facing. Then Key's book on Southern Politics gave me
some better understanding. But I think more than
intellectual graphs it was human beings that were going through similar
strokes, and had a vision of what the south could be. Scotty Cowan and I
were very close. Jean Smathers less so, but Jean and I were good
friends. And Cox, and I was very close to Nell in a personal sort of
way. And she told me go and see so and so when you go through
Hendersonville, South Carolina or go and see so and so in Nevada which I
did. So it was more I was sort of a visiting fireman as it were but I
got a lot of help from other people. But I think that it was the old
testament and the new testament connections trying to transform a racial
society. And the whole question, this was an intergrated situation. I
was living in a segregated society, segregated churches by and large and
I was in peril quite often, physical peril, when I was a laborer. And I
was threatened, I mean that I was never beaten up or I was never jailed,
but it was a constant harassment. And I rather enjoyed it but I was
often tired of it at times. My salary with the C.I.O. was 50 dollars a
week with travel money. And that is about what we were living on with
the church's sparse fare. So I would say that it is healing connections
with people who stood for something, who would share their fustrations
and their hopes and vice versa.