1950's Religion | Integration of Churches

Churches' Role.

Much of the hard work of promoting civil rights and integration during the 1950s took place in the churches of the United States. In November 1952 eight of the nine faculty of the Graduate School of Theology of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, including the dean of the school, announced their resignation effective at the end of the academic year in 1953. They were protesting a ban on admission of black students to that Episcopal university. In June 1953 the trustees of the institution voted to permit the entrance of students to that graduate program without regard to race. The Reverend John M. Moncrief, black, of Orangeburg, South Carolina, applied.

Simon Montgomery.

In 1955 the Reverend Simon P. Montgomery was named pastor of the Methodist church in Old Mystic, Connecticut. A native of South Carolina and a graduate of Boston University, he was the first black minister to head an...