About the project
From 1939 to 1968, the Methodist Church maintained a racially segregated structure known as the Central Jurisdiction - a separate conference created specifically for Black Methodist congregations, spanning thousands of miles and dozens of states. It was written into the church’s constitution. It broke hearts. Yet, the people inside it built something extraordinary anyway.
This short documentary draws on the voices of those who lived that history: bishops, leaders and witnesses who navigated the pain of institutional segregation while sustaining a community of faith that refused to be diminished. Produced by United Methodist Communications for The Connectional Table, the video invites viewers to reflect on the legacy of the Central Jurisdiction and its continuing importance in the life of The United Methodist Church.
Voices featured in this documentary
Bishop Forrest Stith, Retired - Northeastern Jurisdiction
Bishop Alfred L. Norris, Retired - South Central Jurisdiction
Barbara Ricks Thompson - First GCSRW President; GCORR General Secretary, 1985-1998
Bishop Neil L. Irons, Retired - Northeastern Jurisdiction
Bishop J. Lawrence McCleskey, Retired - Southeastern Jurisdiction
Bishop Susan W. Hassinger, Retired - Northeastern Jurisdiction
Transcript
The African American community was a vital part of the Methodist movement from the beginning up to now, the two are inseparable, and yet there was still the dilemma of how we relate together as a community of people who call ourselves Wesleyan Methodists.
Family. Central Jurisdiction was a family. We depended on each other. We didn't have anybody else to depend on.
We learned that that's the way it is. You do the very best you can to not only make it in that situation, but to help improve it.
Our conference, the Central West Conference, stretched all the way from Iowa and maybe a church in South Dakota, down through Nebraska and Kansas and Missouri and over in Colorado and so forth. On one occasion, we went to conference 500 miles to Denver. Then the next year we took 500 miles to St. Louis.
Segregation and discrimination were the law of the land, so you couldn't stop everywhere. You couldn't stop at a hotel. The way Black people traveled then was by staying in people's houses, and when we got to annual conference, the same thing was true. They moved over and the dog got out of the way, and we moved where we could and they had pallets on the floor. My sister and I never slept in a bed at annual conference.
We came together and we sang and we prayed and we worshiped. It was a difficult journey.
An older bishop who really mentored me a bit was out of that Central Jurisdiction, and he said we had always been segregated, but in 1939, segregation was put in the constitution and he said it broke our hearts because we had hoped for more than that.
We were getting ready to build a new building. In 1954, a member of the church raised his hand and said he wanted to move that the building to be built would be forever racially segregated. Our minister, this soft-spoken pastoral man, looked at him and said that motion is out of order for two reasons. Number one, it contradicts the Book of Discipline of the Methodist Church, and number two, it contradicts the gospel of Jesus Christ. I was a 14-year-old kid. I've never forgotten that.
The final straw in the camel's back was when the former EUB Church declared that it would not join this new union in 1968 unless they got rid of that segregation clause in the Constitution.
At the Uniting Conference, the church had been given four years to implement the merger, and I said, why do they need four years to implement something that they should have been working on since 1784? Our merger took place in Louisiana in 1971, and so I went back to the '71 annual conference looking for some guarantees in the merger agreement. There were none. There were none. We had to just trust them. We had to believe that they were going to do something real miraculous. I was not happy.
I very much supported that requirement of the EUBs to abolish the segregated Central Jurisdiction. Well, I think the church has honored that commitment in language. I'm not sure entirely in actions.
We tried to be sure that every ethnic group was represented in the leadership of the organization, and so that helped us, I think, to begin to push ahead in trying to not only be inclusive around the issues of sexism, but also racism.
I'll just be honest with you, to this day, I don't think that the church has fully recognized the jewel that the Black church is - its faith, its stick-to-it-iveness, its tenacity. So we're going to do this together. I don't think the church yet recognizes that and appreciates it and gives thanks for it.
Any meeting you have, no matter how significant or insignificant, be sure that some people like me are a part of it.
We worked at cultivating numbers, but did we cultivate attitudes? Did we work on changing people's minds, changing people's hearts? Did we build trust?
There are some persons who are so resistant to any change that it's hard for them to even experience healing. What are the steps we need to take to dismantle, because dismantling is part of every major change as well as reforming, reconfiguring?
Affirm the goodness of diversity, share power, value friendship, and then finally pay attention to history.
I think our church is at a propitious moment that it must not let itself retract or go back in time to something that would be worse than what we have now, which is segregation or separation or dissolution or splintering. We have a great church with a great worldwide mission. Let's not lose it. Let's trust God to see us through.
Production information
Produced by United Methodist Communications for The Connectional Table
Media contact
Paul Gómez
[email protected]