More about the work of the Diocesan Commission on Race Relations

previous post this refers to: http://rachel-dobson.blogspot.com/2010/01/race-relations-and-episcopal-church-in.html

Alabama’s Episcopal history dates back to the first decades of the nineteenth century. The two oldest parishes in Alabama are Christ Church, Mobile (now in the Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast) and Christ Church, Tuscaloosa, dating to about 1828. Most early large landowners in Alabama owned slaves, and Episcopalians were no exception to this. As in other states and early territories, Episcopalians were also often well–educated professionals and leaders in the state legislature, judicial system, and in local governments. The labor of enslaved Africans supported the building of churches directly. Indirectly (or directly), the slave system supported the church because a large landowner, by having slaves do the work (who were often also managed by an overseer) was able to take his attention away from responsibilities on the plantation to focus on other responsibilities such as civic government, and/or developing the parish. This is just one example of how slaveowning supported the development of churches in the local society.

This phenomenon did not just happen in Alabama, or only in the South. Other Episcopal dioceses in the United States have taken seriously Resolution A123 and are researching and documenting their early connections to slavery and segregation. Two examples are the Dioceses of New York and Pennsylvania. Some of this work has been inspired or spurred on by the research of Katrina Brown, whose ancestors the DeWolfs were the largest slave owning family in US history, and were also Episcopalians, including local bishops and one Presiding Bishop. Her research came together in the award –winning film, Traces of the Trade, and some of her cousins who participated in her project have also gone on to do work on reparations and racial reconciliation. Episcopalians have a history as old as this country tied up with slavery, with the oppression of a group of people. Now many Episcopalians throughout the United States, in the North and the South, are working to remedy the wrongs of their ancestors.

In Alabama, parishes' histories in race relations are varied. Although some parishes are younger they often have just as interesting a history as the older parishes. In Jefferson County, parishes such as Church of the Advent were founded and developed by the wealthy industrialists of the area. Part of the history Episcopalians must examine and deal with is that the industrial wealth of the relatively young city of Birmingham and surrounding settlements was built in part on the system of convict labor, which consisted of forcing convicts – who were always predominately African Americans – to work under often horrific conditions. The system of convict leasing in the South and the industries who used it have been recently documented by Doug Blackmon in his book, Slavery by Another Name.

The parish historian at Canterbury Chapel, Tuscaloosa, Kelley Hudlow, has another sort of history to gather. Canterbury was only established in the 1940s, as a mission of Christ Church, Tuscaloosa. Canterbury’s history in relation to race has been mostly (but not entirely) in our involvement in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, most notably because the Reverend Emmet Gribbin helped Autherine Lucy as she enrolled in the all–white University of Alabama in 1956. There were several parishioners at Canterbury who supported him, some who worked within the UA administration, like Jeff Bennett, President Carmichael’s assistant, and Sarah Healy, Dean of Women, who acted as a go–between in talks between Ms. Lucy’s representative and the administration. This period of history has been carefully detailed by E. Culpepper Clark in his fascinating history of the period, The Schoolhouse Door.

To be continued.