1967, A Stunning Announcement
DEAN KOWALSKI The Civil Rights movement was the real test of faith in our time. We were marching, and the Church was trying to catch up. The Church was fighting itself about what position to take—either embracing civil rights or not. THE REV. CANON TOM MILLER
In the decade of John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Vietnam War, and civil rights marches, many people and groups were struggling to maintain a balance between attempting to draw strength from their ties with the traditional institutions from which these movements had sprung and, at the same time, to shake up and destabilize those same institutions.
THE REV. TOM PIKE
I was ordained at the Cathedral in 1963. I began my ministry feeling that justice was a legitimate concern for the religious community. I was adamantly committed to social justice as the reasonable expression of religious commitment. When Dr. King came out against the war in Vietnam, I remember being very nervous that he was confusing things— and that opposition to the war was going to dilute the Civil Rights movement. But I slowly began to realize that Dr. King was on target. That addressing this issue of the war was central to the soul and life of America. I moved as a parish priest from my opposition to racism to an opposition to the war in Vietnam. And I was not alone. People were marching and getting arrested. There was a lot of turmoil. Many people resented what the activists were doing. One of my star acolytes was killed in Vietnam. The funeral was held at my church. I think if the soldiers who came to that funeral had had loaded rifles they would have shot me right there in my own church. HONOR MOORE We were taken to demonstrations as children, but just my brother Paul went to the 1963 Jobs and Freedom March in Washington. My father had been in Mississippi, and he’d been around the Klan, the gunfire, and feared the violence. He had nine children and he didn’t want to be careless.
“During this long travail our ancestors spoke to us, and we listened, and we tried to make you hear life in our song but now it matters not at all to me whether you know what I am talking about— or not: I know why we are not blinded by your brightness, are able to see you, who cannot see us. I know why we are still here.” JAMES BALDWIN, INDUCTED INTO THE AMERICAN POETS CORNER, 2011 WAYNE KEMPTON Segregation and discrimination were on the forefront of the national consciousness. Housing projects were falling apart. Unemployment was skyrocketing. Bishop Donegan had a plan to finish the Cathedral. He was in the embryonic stages of fundraising. But Donegan stopped the construction. Instead, he put money into street and storefront community organizations that were helping their own neighborhoods. THE REV. TOM PIKE
Bishop Donegan followed the old tradition of a Prince Bishop. He lived in the days when the Bishop had a chauffeur and was driven around from place to place. We joked about someone pulling a subway token out, and Bishop Donegan asking, “What’s that coin?” But in 1967 he made the stunning announcement that donations for finishing St. John the Divine would be given instead to housing and development projects in Harlem. BISHOP HORACE WILLIAM BADEN DONEGAN We will not pour money into a building when our cities are burning. This unfinished Cathedral, towering as it does over our great and suffering metropolis, shall be the prophetic symbol that our society is still as rough-hewn, ragged, broken, and incomplete as the building itself.
PAMELA MORTON Selma changed everything. We used to bring our children to protests, but we never expected to be attacked. In 1965, the Selma kids were brutally beaten, and there was an immediate response. Selma was important. I would say very, very important. DEAN MORTON When we got the message about Selma, we just said, “Let’s go.” In hindsight, it was so decisive. We were there with Reverend Reeb, the Unitarian minister, the night he was shot. We got to know Dr. King and his staff in action. It was unforgettable.
Bishop Horace W. B. Donegan photographed with New York City Mayor John Lindsay. 22
23
