The Methodist Impact on Integration at Albion College

The Methodist Church and Integration

The Methodist Church was integral to the integration process at Albion College not only through its pastoral leadership, but also through its connections to a larger church organization. Due to the historic connection of Albion College and institutional structure it was able to get many speakers to come to Albion College as well as plan and participate in many events which allowed for the fact that the Methodist Church supported integration to be widely known. Now the Methodist Church supporting integration may not have had a hard power in ensuring that integration occurred at Albion College, but due to the degree that the Methodist Church was integrated into the life of Albion College I believe that the soft power that the Methodist Church exerted by bringing speakers to the college and by other more institutional events it was able to help push for the cause of integration at Albion College. Speakers at a college have a major impact in what kind of messaging the community is taking in and what things they are likely to pick up on and promote. By consistently and early bringing in speakers on and about racial issues the Methodist Church was able to help keep the conversation focused and pushing towards integration, and I believe that this was a major factor in pushing the opinion about integration at the college. The second way that the Methodist Church helped push the opinion towards integration was the way it collaborated with the student body and institution as a whole to help push the college toward integration. This was both by working with the wide Methodist Church, but also being deeply involved in the other talks at Albion College to help support the conversation about race at Albion College forward in general, as well as opening it's own church up to student leadership, giving students a voice in who was coming to speak which shows how connected the opinions of the students and the Methodist Church were at this time. I think both of these may have not directly impacted how integration went forward at Albion, but rathe I think they helped push the conversation firmly towards a positive opinion of integration by who they were having speak and how they more broadly interacted with the campus.

1954-04-02, 2 Harvard Students to talk in Chapel, Albion Pleiad

I think that this was one of the most remarkable things I discovered was that in 1954 the Methodist Church helped to get Rev. Archibald Carey to speak at the College. Now it does not say this in the article itself which really did not get into anything besides Carey's career, but when looking at Carey's life we see that he was actively promoting racial equality. He was a speaker at the 1952 Republican National Convention and called for equality of all minorities, and later became an important confidant to Martin Luther King JR. So although the article does not get into what he was going to say directly at Goodrich Chapel, we can see from his career of being an alderman in Chicago and a law professor and a churchmen that he was most likely going to draw on all of this experience to help move the conversation forward about racial integration. I think this is remarkable because we see 10 years before the worse of the struggles over race in the 60s broke out that the Methodist Church is already promoting a speaker to come to the college who support racial equality in the early 1950s. If voices like Careys were already being brought to campus by the Methodist Church I think we can see that it had a consistent and early message in support of racial equality.

1963-03-08, King to Speak on ‘American Dream’, Albion Pleiad

Secondly, the Methodist Church got the most important racial justice leader at the time to come and speak at Albion, which shows the level of connections they had. I think the article is highly significant because it almost exclusively connects the integration movement overall with Christian faith. Throughout the article, there are constant messages about how King was raised a Christian, is a pastor at his church and the final quote which is from King himself states: "Our use of passive resistance In Montgomery is not based on resist- ance to get rights for ourselves, but to achieve friendship with the men who are denying us our rights, and to change them through friendship and a bond of Christian understanding before God,"

I think that this shows that there is a connection not just because he states that he is trying to do his work through God, but in that that he uses one of the most common ideas in Christianity, loving thy enemy to do so. We could talk a lot more about how explicitly Christin the message of Martin Luther King Jr. was, but I think the most important thing was the impact the Methodist church had on bringing Martin Luther King Jr to Albion was the main reason that the most notable leader in the civil rights movement was able come and speak and to impact change, showing that the Church leadership was in a position to come and get him to speak, showing their agreement and willingness for his cause. Without this connection I doubt that Martin Luther King Jr would have just come to speak about racial issues at Albion for no reason, so the link to the Methodist Church in this case was essential in brining him here

Ann Caster, 1963-11-13, Noted Integration Leader, Dallas Clergyman to Talk, Albion Pleiad

I think that this last example is very important because it shows that the Methodist Church did not stop using it's connections to the wide Methodist Church to keep bringing in integration leaders to speak at Albion to keep pushing the conversation forward even after they got the one of the biggest integration leaders to come and speak. Not only does this keep pushing the point home that the Methodist Church supports the integration of Albion College, but it shows that they are committed to keep brining in speakers about the issue and keep pushing the conversation even after they got MLK here, showing they are continually and not just nominally or passively committing to this effort. I think this particular case is especially interesting because the speaker was involved in running against the normal Democratic Party in Mississippi, which shows that they were not just picking people who were talking about this change but actually running to make it, which I thought was especially important in giving that message to the college. A continual and long term commitment is shown by the Methodist Church keeping to bring in speakers.

1959-11-06, Chapel Committee Reveals How Speakers are Chosen, Albion Pleiad

I think that this article shows that the level of student and faculty involvement in helping to pick speakers at Goodrich Chapel was very developed and in place by the time most of the speakers I mentioned were coming to Albion College. Apparently a committee of five faculty members and three students picked from the various speakers who were pooled as possible speakers for that year and they discussed the choices and their merits and why they would want them to come speak and all of the other things that into having someone come to speak on campus. Now I think this shows that not only did the Methodist Church use it's connections to help bring various speakers and people to campus who may be able to help push the debate on racial equality forward, but we can see that this had to be approved by the faculty and students at Albion College. So from all the examples of speakers above we see that the Methodist Church brought them in, but we can assume that they were all approved by this committee, which I think does a lot to show how the Methodist Church was able to interact with the College and it's community to help push the conversation forward about race, and with this connection being so intimate and strong I think we can really see that the Church was helping the College in promoting integration. Consent from both the faculty and the students may in some cases give us a skewed picture , but more likely this is an accurate reflection of what the student and faculty were trying to help promote as well, so I think this connection is crucial in showing how the Church interacted with the community to help create this change.

1964-02-08, Extremists, Clergy to Pursue Meaning of Morality in VIM, Albion Pleiad

I think that this debate is one of the most interesting things that the Methodist Church helped to promote. We see that the Church definitely got professor Joesph Matthews to come to the college to help to promote the Christian idea in contemporary culture, but we also see that people like a member of the playboy executive board and a freedom rider were also called to attend. I think this could possibly show conflict as the Christian idea as promoted by Matthews could be different of the vision that the freedom rider had, (he for sure disagreed with the playboy staffer). But I think the entire point of having a debate about contemporary culture is really important in pushing forward the conversation about integration. This debate would have happened at around the same time as integration was really getting going at Albion, so having this debate certainly would have helped the people at Albion see multiple perspectives of where people interacting in this culture were at even if they were not talking about integration directly, which I think shows how committed the Church was in bringing in people to talk about not just the issue itself but people who were willing to look into the culture and see what direction it was going in and how that related to integration, and not just to speak at people at it, but to have a real debate about it which I think also puts them maybe not in the position they want to be in, but a position that will help students at the college understand the broader overall cultural undertones that helped push the integration debate forward, which is almost as important.

1969-11-14, Methodist Conference Conducts Study of Albion Racial Policies, Albion Pleiad

In my last article I think it shows the more institutional way as opposed to the charismatic way that the Methodist Church sought to help improve racial integration at Albion College. The Methodist Church used it's organizational processes to help start a commission on racial integration at Albion. This was in 1969, November 14th, so almost the turn of the decade. I think that this shows that there was a vested interest in the Methodist Church to see that racial integration was going on successfully, but also that the community was heavily involved in the process, and that a wide area of study was conducted. It think this is crucial because it shows us that the Methodist Church wanted to provide Albion College with data about its integration processes, showing that this was not something the college just did but actively strove to improve upon. By conducting a study like this and committing to showing whatever they find allows for the college to check how its doing and how many African American students they were emitting, to show that they were not just having people come and talk about change, but also actively studying how this change was going or not going forward, which shows the level of support the Methodist Church had for the real completion of integration at the college.

1954-04-02, 2 Harvard Students to talk in Chapel, Albion Pleiad

1963-03-08, King to Speak on ‘American Dream’, Albion Pleiad

Ann Caster, 1963-11-13, Noted Integration Leader, Dallas Clergyman to Talk, Albion Pleiad

1959-11-06, Chapel Committee Reveals How Speakers are Chosen, Albion Pleiad

1964-02-08, Extremists, Clergy to Pursue Meaning of Morality in VIM, Albion Pleiad

1969-11-14, Methodist Conference Conducts Study of Albion Racial Policies, Albion Pleiad