On the Road to Civil Rights

By Inman Moore

Inman Moore grew up in Southern Mississippi, mainly along the Gulf Coast. He is a graduate of Long Beach High School, Mississippi, and Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi, and holds a graduate degree in theology from the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

Inman has been pastor of churches in both Mississippi and California. While in Mississippi, during the late fifties and early sixties, Inman was very involved in the civil rights movement. He was a founding member of the reconstituted Mississippi Council on Human Relations. In January of 1963, while pastor of Leggett Memorial United Methodist Church in Biloxi, Mississippi, he was one of twenty-eight Mississippi ministers who signed a statement on civil rights entitled Born of Conviction. In April of 1963, Inman and his family moved to California, to a pastorate in Palmdale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514407219

Inman Moore

Inman Moore grew up in Southern Mississippi, mainly along the Gulf Coast. He is a graduate of Long Beach High School, Mississippi, and Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi, and holds a graduate degree in theology from the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgie. Inman has been pastor of churches in both Mississippi and California. While in Mississippi, during the late fifties and early sixties, Inman was very involved in the civil rights movement. He was a founding member of the reconstituted Mississippi Council on Human Relations. In January of 1963, while pastor of Leggett Memorial United Methodist Church in Biloxi, Mississippi, he was one of twenty-eight Mississippi ministers who signed a statement on civil rights entitled Born of Conviction. In April of 1963, Inman and his family moved to California, to a pastorate in Palmdale.

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PART ONE

BEGINNINGS

Chapter One

Born of Conviction

In the first week of January, 1963, there appeared a statement in the Mississippi Methodist Advocate, a publication that circulated all over the state of Mississippi. It was entitled Born of Conviction, and was signed by twenty-eight United Methodist Church Ministers (See Appendix # 1). I was one of the twenty-eight. First, the statement said that there should be freedom of the pulpit. Secondly it affirmed that all humans were born free and equal and opposed racial discrimination. Thirdly, the article opposed the building of private school academies with state tax money to avoid school integration. In the fourth place, it said that the signers of the statement were not Communists and that we were opposed to Communism. The signers included Communism in the statement because the White Citizens Councils and the Ku Klux Klan had circulated literature all over the state declaring that the Communist Party was stirring up all the racial unrest in the South, and that all true Southerners, including blacks, are all very happy with things as they are. So, in their eyes, since we were stirring up trouble, the twenty-eight were Communists. Well, we twenty-eight did stir up a great amount of trouble. We plead guilty to that charge. But none of us were Communists.

The statement, Born of Conviction, was immediately picked up by the Associated Press and it made the front page of newspapers all over America, including Mississippi. Literally, all hell broke loose in Mississippi. Nearly all the Mississippi newspapers were owned by segregationists who wrote scathing editorials condemning the twenty-eight. In their eyes we were destroying their beloved Southern way of life.

The Hederman brothers, ardent segregationists, owned the Daily Clarion Ledger and the Jackson Daily News, the two largest newspapers in Mississippi. Located in Jackson, the state capital, these two papers were especially vicious. They were totally dedicated to segregation and The Southern Way of Life. Jimmy Ward, Editor of the Jackson Daily News, almost daily had very harsh comments about the twenty-eight and integration efforts in general.

In addition to the editorials in newspapers all over the state, a ton of condemnatory Letters to the Editor appeared daily. Here are a couple of the many that appeared in the Jackson Daily News:

1. This a letter from a reader in McComb, Mississippi: "You have done your state and church a great disservice. While the fires of the Oxford crisis (meaning the admission of James Meredith, a black man, to the University of Mississippi at Oxford) are still smoldering, you are adding more fuel, which will cause churches to split from within and without, and race relations to worsen. -—Most people prefer to worship with their own kind. I don’t regard it as racial prejudice. I call it race preference."

A person in Cleveland, MS wrote implying that we were Communists stirring up trouble and further said, The doctrine of the Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man spoken of in the Bible refers to the spiritual and not the physical world. -—The Communists don’t care what we believe. All they want is to cause trouble and discord among us.

While there were other Methodist Ministers in Mississippi who shared the feelings of the twenty-eight, a large number of the ministers were publicly segregationists. Several ministers in the Mississippi Conference wrote strong Letters to the Editor stating their disapproval of the twenty-eight, and indicating the twenty-eight were only stirring up trouble.

Letters to the Editor castigating us continued to appear in the Mississippi newspapers for several years. My wife, Nellie, and I visited Mississippi three years after our move to California and there were still Letters to the Editor condemning the twenty-eight for destroying the Southern Way of Life.

While most of the newspapers in Mississippi were segregationists, during all those years there were several courageous Mississippi editors, notably: Hodding Carter in Greenville, Oliver Emmerich in McComb, Ira Harkey in Pascagoula, Hazel Brannon Smith in Lexington, and P. D. East, editor of The Petal Paper in the small town of Petal near Hattiesburg. Nevertheless the vast numbers of newspapers in Mississippi were huge supporters of segregation and the Southern Way of Life.

Because of the local and national publicity, the twenty-eight received a huge amount of mail and quite a number of phone calls. Most of the letters from out of state were congratulatory. Here is one that I received from Methodist Bishop A. Raymond Grant in Portland, Oregon. He wrote:

My dear Brother:

Naturally I am thrilled over the enclosure of the statement released under the general theme of, Born of Conviction. I do not need to tell you that I am completely in sympathy with all the expressions therein and thank God for the positive witness that you and others have made in your Conference. As Chairman of the Division of Christian Social Concerns, wherein we are engaged upon all the problems attendant upon human relations, I want to tell you how proud all of us in the General Church are of the stand you have taken.

Sincerely yours,

A. Raymond Grant

Most of the letters from inside the state were castigating us. Some were quite hurtful. For example, I received a letter from a cousin who was the head of Mississippi’s junior college system. He said, Inman, you have besmirched the good name of ‘Moore’ forever.

Another letter, sent by a woman member of a former church that I had served in Mid-Mississippi, was extremely mournful that, out of ignorance, I had been duped by the Communist Party, and she hoped that I would come to my senses and recant my dreadful mistake.

The upshot of it was that all of the twenty-eight and their families came under immense fire. Several of the twenty-eight were immediately locked out of their churches. They were met by the church officials at the doors of their churches on the Sunday following the publication of the Born of Conviction statement and would not allow the ministers in to conduct the worship service. Some of the ministers sustained physical damage to their cars and other property. Among them was Rev. William Lampton, Pastor of the Pisgah United Methodist Church. He had his tires slashed and was not allowed to conduct services in his church the following Sunday. Rev. Ed McRae had a cross burned on his lawn.

Rev. Jerry Trigg, serving as pastor of a Mississippi church near the Alabama state line, received word from the FBI that the Alabama Ku Klux Klan was out to get him. While some of his members were not happy that Rev. Trigg had signed the Born of Conviction statement, none of them wanted their minister and his family to be harmed. So, members of his church came and sat on the front porch of the parsonage for the first day after the threat on his life. Then, for safety’s sake, they formed a motorcade and escorted Rev. Trigg and his family to his hometown, where the family remained for a number of days.

Rev. Summer Walters, serving a pastorate in Natchez, received several death threats. Rev. Don Manning-Miller, pastor of a Baptist Church in New Albany, MS, publicly supported the Born of Conviction statement and was immediately booted from his pulpit. Shortly after the statement appeared, Dr. W. B. Selah, longtime pastor of Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church in Jackson, the largest Methodist Church in Mississippi with over 4000 members, resigned his position after learning his officials had turned away several blacks who attempted to attend a worship service. The associate pastor, Rev. Jerry Furr, and one of the twenty-eight, also resigned.

All of the twenty-eight received numerous phone calls. Some of the calls were very intimidating. It is, to say the least, a little discomforting to receive late night phone calls with veiled threats.

Also all of the twenty-eight were urged by friends and foes to recant our sinful attempt to destroy the Southern Way of Life. Pressure was put on us by church members, relatives, friends, and church officials, to recant our statement. They told us that, if we recanted, all would be forgotten and forgiven. I had a very close older friend, also a minister, come to me and say, Inman, you are young. You are pastor of a good church. You have a bright future ahead of you. Things will eventually change. Why don’t you find a way to say you made a mistake and all will be forgiven? My reply was When will things change? Five years, ten years, fifty years, a hundred years? In the meantime thousands of young black children will grow up thinking they are second class citizens and that something must be wrong with them. The outcome was that not one of the twenty-eight ever recanted. I am very proud of that. All of us took the consequences and moved on.

In opposition to the Born of Conviction statement there was immediately formed a group of persons entitled The Mississippi Association of Methodist Ministers and Laymen. They were members of a number of Methodist Churches throughout the state. They issued an opposition statement to the Born of Conviction statement which said We do not believe it is Christian to endanger a social institution such as segregation, which has protected both races and allowed both their fullest development. In our observation, personal relations between members of the two races are far friendlier in Jackson, MS than in Chicago, IL.

Did the Methodist Bishop in Mississippi support the twenty-eight in their stand on civil rights? Unfortunately, he did not. He wrote an article that appeared in the next issue of the Mississippi Methodist Advocate following the appearance of the twenty-eight’s statement, Born of Conviction. In his statement he reminded church congregations that they did not have to integrate and publicly offered no support whatsoever of the twenty-eight. My own District Superintendent was an avowed segregationist. So I certainly found no support from him.

Let me pause for a moment to define the United Methodist Church territorially. In the United States the country is divided into annual conferences, and each annual conference territory is presided over by a bishop. Also, each annual conference is divided into districts, and each district is presided over by a district superintendent. The district superintendents report to the bishop and form what is called the Bishop’s Cabinet. The bishop and the Bishop’s Cabinet determine the annual appointments of the ministers to the various churches in the conference area for the upcoming conference year. In 1963 there were two annual conferences in the State of Mississippi: The Mississippi Conference, and the North Mississippi Conference. The same bishop presided over both Conferences. I was a member of the Mississippi Conference which included the entire southern half of the state.

So, in my particular case, I was neither supported by my bishop nor by my district superintendent. From a ministerial standpoint this left me in a rather lonely position. In varying degrees all of the twenty-eight were in the same position that I was.

Well, what happened to the twenty-eight? By November of 1963 twenty of the twenty-eight had left Mississippi. Why did these twenty leave? As I previously mentioned some of the ministers were immediately forced out and not allowed inside their churches. So they didn’t have much choice in the matter. Others decided to leave because of the lack of support from the church ecclesiastical leaders. And there were various other reasons why twenty of the twenty-eight left. Thirteen of the twenty-eight came to California and were appointed to various churches in Southern California and Arizona. Nellie and I, our four children, a guinea pig, and a Boston terrier took off for Palmdale, California in April of 1963, where I had been appointed by Bishop Gerald Kennedy to be the pastor of the Palmdale United Methodist Church. Bishop Kennedy was very progressive in the area of racial civil rights and made us feel very much at home in our new surroundings. We grew to love Palmdale and remained there for four years.

About a year after twenty of the twenty-eight had left Mississippi, the Mississippi Methodist Annual Conference sent out a questionnaire asking those of us who had left to explain why we left. Here is my reply on March 12, 1964:

Dear Mr. Berry,

I appreciate your letter of February 29th requesting my comments as to why I transferred from the Mississippi Conference. I shall do my best to give an honest and frank appraisal as to why I decided to leave, hoping that my comments will be of some assistance to the monumental and important task your committee has before it.

Let me begin by saying that I grew up in the Methodist Church. My father is a Methodist Minister in the Mississippi Conference. I was educated at Methodist Schools: Millsaps College and the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. I was a fully ordained minister in the Mississippi Conference for about 14 years. I served pastorates at Montrose, Pelahatchie, Wesson, and Leggett Memorial, Biloxi. So, I do know a great deal about Mississippi Methodism and Mississippi. I love the Methodist Church, and I love Mississippi.

There are a great body of dedicated ministers and laymen in the Mississippi Conference. I was inspired and encouraged by laymen within and without the churches I served. Many of the ministers in the Conference are among the most dedicated, intelligent, and courageous men anywhere in the Methodist Church. There are ministers in your midst that would be outstanding anywhere in America.

While it perhaps should not be necessary to state, I think I should say that I am neither a Communist nor a Communist sympathizer. I personally do not believe that one can be a Communist and a Christian at the same time, and I am firmly committed to the Christian Faith. In Christ I find God. In Christ I find strength for the journey of life now and forever. I believe in the