“Half a century ago, Martin Luther King came to this place fresh from a riot in . . . Los Angeles
to give a speech. In that speech he said a lot of things that he had said in other places. He
spoke, for instance, of the neutrality of time; the fact that while people think that time makes
change, it is actually people who make change in time. He spoke of the inter-relatedness of life,
the fact that we are—as he liked to put it—threads in a single garment of destiny. But he also
said some things that he did not say every place else. I’m not sure if he said them any place else,
but I know he didn’t say them very often. The title of the speech was ‘The Church on the
Frontier of Racial Tension’ but if you listen closely, much of what Dr. King had to say was
actually about the church’s failure to be on that frontier, about its moral timidity, its refusal to
lead in the cause of justice. ‘People of faith’ said Dr. King, ‘have an obligation to speak up for
racial justice’ but . . . ‘we must admit . . . that all too often the church has been lax at this point.
All too often, in the midst of social evil, too many Christians have somehow stood still only to
mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. All too often, in the midst of racial
injustice, too many Christians have remained silent behind the safe security of stained glass
windows.’ And so, here we are . . .”1
Leonard Pitts, Anderson Auditorium, Montreat, North Carolina, August 21, 2015
In August 2015, the Montreat Conference Center hosted a conference called Dr. King’s
Unfinished Agenda: A Teach-In for Rededicating Ourselves to the Dream. Lecturers and
pastors, including Leonard Pitts, stood on the same stage and behind the same pulpit that had
been occupied by Dr. King fifty years earlier. The conference was held with the intent of
looking back on how far both the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the nation have come while
also recognizing the work that is still undone in social justice and civil rights. As conference
promoters described, “Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King’s address to the Christian
Action Conference in Montreat is the occasion for a look toward the future.”2 The conference
was also used as a tool to reorient, or change, the memory of the Civil Rights Movement in
Montreat as completed process and reframe a vision for the future of the town. “In a nation still
struggling to build bridges between races and heal divisions generations old, how can the church
of today answer the challenges posed in Anderson Auditorium in 1965?”3 In the reorientation of
memory, the Church in Montreat largely dismissed their own involvement in the segregation of
the 20th century; the Church separated itself from the “nation still struggling to build bridges.”
This idealization of the past to define the present and look to the future characterizes historical
narratives of Montreat.
This thesis uses two landmark moments—King’s visit in 1965 and the 2015 conference
in commemoration of his visit—to examine the ways that Montreat’s residents and institutions
have participated in orienting and reorienting the process of remembering segregation in the
town. The following pages explore the critical and entangled histories of Montreat and its
segregationist policies to understand how they emerge in relation to different sources of memory.
The intersection of these variables make plain that history is never objective; it is contentious
and often contested. The history of race in Montreat is complex and exists in several different
formats and versions. Because of the contentious nature of history, and particularly the history of
2 "Dr. King's Unfinished Agenda - Montreat Conference Center," Montreat Conference Center, Accessed October 20, 2015, http://www.montreat.org/MLK/.
race, this thesis will use the memories and narratives of institutions and individuals in Montreat
to demonstrate how differing institutional and individual memories compete for authority in the
way King’s visit is remembered. This thesis argues that memories curated by institutions in
Montreat have orienting power over the memories of individual residents. While these
individuals maintain power to undermine institutional outputs, the combined resources of
Montreat institutions allows them to script the memory of race in Montreat and disseminate that
script into the memory of the town. Moreover, this thesis ultimately suggests that many of
Montreat’s residents are—perhaps counterintuitively—amenable to the simplified scripts that
institutions supply since the scripts typically build community esteem at the expense of a more
troubling, complicated engagement with the past.
The following introduction provides a historical context for Presbyterian attitudes
towards slavery and segregation, and establishes Montreat as both a unique site of Presbyterian
memory set apart from the larger Presbyterian Church and as a place where institutions and
individuals grapple over the history of segregation. The first chapter analyzes how three histories
of segregation in the Presbyterian Church mobilize individual and institutional memories to
create history. This chapter also establishes a vocabulary for conceptualizing the production and
preservation of memory in Montreat, drawing on John Bodnar’s definitions of official,
vernacular, and public forms of memory. Chapter 2 examines the Montreat Conference Center’s
institutional power to reorient individuals’ memories of segregation as demonstrated at the 2015
celebration of King’s visit. In the same chapter, however, I also draw attention to the limitations,
simplifications, and internal inconsistencies that fissure the power of institutional memory and
make it problematic for understanding a complete history and memory of race in Montreat. After
memories of individual residents of Montreat can complicate, undermine and amend the
memories propagated by the Conference Center. Despite the challenges to institutional
memories, this chapter also examines the 2015 commemorative conference as an event which
fortified a single, simplified amalgamation of institutional and individual memories of King’s
visit. The final chapter of this thesis further clarifies the dynamic interaction between
institutional and individual memories of segregation in Montreat while emphasizing the authorial
force of “official” memories in an institutionally dominated town.
A Troubled Church
Presbyterian theology crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Scotland in the early 17th century
where it was soon and profoundly changed by its new home. The tradition made its home in
Philadelphia and its first regional governing body, known as a Presbytery, was founded in 1706.4
From there, Presbyterianism moved South to make its home among plantation owners and
farmers. A religious institution that serves a higher power is still comprised of humans, and as
such is subject to spiritual controversy over secular politics.
Slavery was a prominent and controversial issue for these early Southern Presbyterians as
many white Southerners had a vested economic interest in maintaining the institution. They
developed detailed theological arguments supporting its supposed divine ordinance, pointing to
passages in the Old Testament as evidence. In contrast, New Englanders and others far north
moved away from supporting slavery in the late 18th century, and Presbyterians in the North
began to view slavery as a violation of the law of God. Tensions surrounding this issue mounted
in the Church as they also ran high on a national scale. Two major Presbyterian theologians
stood opposed on the issue of slavery in the church: Reverends Albert Barnes and Reverend
James Henley Thornwell. The Northern church stood behind Reverend Barnes, who wrote in his
book Church and Slavery that “nothing can be more certain than that man was formed by his
maker for freedom, and that all men have a right to be free.”5 Barnes argued that there was a
difference between Old Testament bondage and American slavery, and that the cultural context
of the Old Testament and the 19th century were significantly different. Thornwell, on the other
hand, responded to Barnes by defending the institution of slavery as divinely ordained. He
exhorted masters to refrain from abusing or mistreating their slaves, but was not specific about
the details of such treatment. Historians Walter H. Conser and Robert J. Cain conclude that
“where Barnes invoked the spirit of the text, Thornwell rested on an acceptance of the
commonsense, literal meaning of the text.”6 The contrast in the preaching and writing of these
two theologians embodied the tension that was rising in a church shaped by the tumultuous
political climate surrounding it.
Tensions came to a head with the Gardiner Spring Resolutions in May 1861, a year after
the split of the Democratic political party along geographical lines. The Resolutions were
formed at a meeting of the General Assembly—the regional governing body of the Presbyterian
Church—in Philadelphia with little Southern attendance. Those who did attend called for the
members of the church “to promote and perpetuate, so far as in us lies, the integrity of these
United States, and to strengthen, uphold, and encourage, the Federal Government in the exercise
of all its functions under our noble Constitution, and to this Constitution . . . we profess our
unabated loyalty.”7 Not surprisingly, this resolution met heavy resistance from Presbyterians in
5 Walter H. Conser and Robert J. Cain, Presbyterians in North Carolina: Race, Politics, and Religious Identity in
Historical Perspective (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012), 37.
the South, who believed the Resolutions were an unacceptable conflation of religion and politics.
In December that same year, forty-seven Southern presbyteries sent delegates to Augusta,
Georgia to declare and formalize a split between the Northern and Southern Presbyterian
Churches.
Not only did the Northern Presbyterian Church accept freed slaves and Black members
during this time, but, generally speaking, the church in the North also began to move towards
integrated congregations of believers worshiping together. Further, the Northern Presbyterian
Church, which called for equality between races much earlier than the Southern Church,
attempted to send missionaries to the South until as late as the mid-20th century to train pastors
and assist Black Presbyterians who had been barred from attending Southern Presbyterian
Churches. However, these missionaries found that they were unwelcome in the South. Though
part of a newly unified nation, the South was still determined to preserve its “Lost Cause” and
rejected any Northern ideology or theology.
By 1897, the same year that the town of Montreat was founded, Southern Presbyterians
had formed the Afro-American Presbyterian Synod to house all Black congregations separately
from their white counterparts. The name of this Synod later was changed to Snedecor Memorial
Synod in 1917 in honor of a former administrator of the Stillman Institute, a college to train
black Presbyterian ministers in Alabama.8 While white Presbyterians were building their spiritual
home in the North Carolina mountains, Black Presbyterians were being isolated and barred from
participation in General Assembly meetings and Southern Presbyterian conferences. The growth
and success of white institutions and the simultaneous exclusion and discrimination shown
towards Blacks came to dominate the Southern part of the United States, and subsequently the
Presbyterian Church as it existed in that space.
The Presbyterian Church did not reunify its pro and anti-slavery factions until 1983,
when they finally joined to form the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
(PCUSA)—a symbolic name for the coming together of the Northern and Southern branches.
Even after its formal desegregation the Southern Presbyterian Church demonstrated “an almost
unique combination of nationalist and regionalist thinking . . .” as Donald W. Shriver commented
in 1964, “[they] have continued to maintain a peculiarly intimate tie between their feelings for
their church and their feelings for the history of their region. They never quite forget that their
denomination was born with the Confederacy but did not die with it.” 9 Residual memory has
persisted in the mostly white Presbyterian Church in the South as it relates to its black members
even today, and it is this residual Confederate memory that defines race in Montreat. To quote
Dr. King, Southern Presbyterians, particularly in Montreat, “somehow stood still only to mouth
pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities…[they] have remained silent behind the safe
security of stained glass windows.”10 A Special Place
Montreat, North Carolina sits in at the head of the Swannanoa Valley in the western part
of the state. The town is nestled against the gentle slopes and rugged cliffs of the Blue Ridge
Mountains. In 1897, John Collins, a Congregationalist pastor from Connecticut, bought 4,500
acres to begin a non-denominational Christian mountain retreat (later portmanteau’ed into
“Montreat”) and formed the Mountain Retreat Association (MRA) to oversee the Montreat
Conference Center that still exists today. The town immediately began hosting religious
assemblies and conferences. At the time, Collins and those who helped him envisioned the newly
9 Stephen R Haynes, The Last Segregated Hour: The Memphis Kneel-Ins and the Campaign for Southern Church
Desegregation (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2012), 86.
purchased land evolving into a “Christian settlement” and a place of mental and spiritual
renewal.11
Thousands of Southern Christians from various denominations attended conferences in
this secluded and sheltered town, and in 1906 the Presbyterian Synod of North Carolina, a
member of the Southern Presbyterian Church, raised money to assist Reverend J.R. Howerton in
purchasing the property for the denomination. After the transition, the property was put under the
leadership and care of Dr. Robert C. Anderson. Montreat Presbyterian Church, affiliated with the
Southern Presbyterian Church, was organized in 1906.12 Over the following decades, Dr.
Anderson served as President of the Mountain Retreat Association and oversaw the development
of the town, including the creation of Montreat College in 1916, which provided educational
opportunities grounded in Presbyterian theology. The coupling of education and spirituality
locate Montreat at the center of Southern Presbyterianism. Additionally, the town hosted
Southern Presbyterian Church General Assembly meetings and later became the location of
major church legislative decisions, including desegregation and women’s ordination.
In 1907 the Southern Presbyterian Church’s General Assembly meeting held in Montreat
stated in their report on “The Executive Committee of Colored Evangelism:” “There is a silent
but powerful Christian consciousness beginning to assert itself in regard to the presence of the
Negro, and the central motive of that feeling is that the stronger race is largely responsible for the
ignorance and immorality of the weaker.”13 This strong and divisive language set Black
Presbyterians apart from their “stronger” white counterparts and gave institutional authority to
11"History of Montreat," Montreat Conference Center, accessed October 28, 2015, http://www.montreat.org/inquire/history/.
12 Ibid.
the sentiment coursing through Southern race relations. In 1949, the Assembly formed the
“Committee to Study the Place of the Negro in the Montreat Conferences”14 and until February
1965 the town had an official “Negro Policy.”1516 This prominently Presbyterian town and
exclusively white congregation provided King with a pressing reason for his address, “The
Church on the Frontier of Racial Tension.”
Reorientation of Personal Memory
Montreat, North Carolina—as I knew it—was the town of my childhood. It stood outside
of history or culture as a personal site of memory. It was the place of baby steps, childhood
hikes, and teenage drives. My neighbors (including my grandparents, cousins and uncles) are
primarily white, retired, devoutly Presbyterian couples. In my opinion, they spend far more time
tending to their roses and caring too much about the shade of green that would be used to paint
the town’s gatehouse the following spring than would be ordinary elsewhere. The excitingly
rugged yet invitingly gentle mountains surrounding the town extend their welcoming hand to
men and women who want to live in the mountains without the trouble of living in the middle of
nowhere.
Montreat today, as it is known by others, is another world entirely. As one of three
national conference centers for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the town hosts thousands of
Presbyterians attending family and youth conferences each summer. The seeming banality of my
childhood home is lost on these transient strangers. Passing through the stone gate with the word
“Montreat” etched into it, for these summer mountaineers, is an ethereal experience; they are
14 Calvin Davis Grier, Montreat: A Retreat for Renewal, 60.
15 Calvin Davis Grier, Montreat: A Retreat for Renewal, 62.
16 This statement is found in Calvin Grier Davis’s book, but I was unable to find more information on what this
entering holy ground. One conference-goer said that being in Montreat “felt like a spiritual
high . . . a literal mountain-top experience . . . it made me feel like that’s what my whole life
could be like.”17 Despite reunion with the Northern Presbyterian Church, Montreat is set apart in
the consciousness of Southern Presbyterians; it is uniquely Southern, uniquely Presbyterian, and
a predominantly white.
In August, 2015 I attended Dr. King’s Unfinished Agenda: A Teach-In for Rededicating
Ourselves to the Dream. On the final day of the conference I trekked from Anderson Auditorium
to the Montreat bookstore to meet some of the speakers. I was particularly excited to meet
Congressman John Lewis. I struck up a conversation as I walked with a man who had spent a
large portion of his life in Montreat. We began to talk about how interesting Montreat was as a
distinctly Presbyterian town and the significance of King’s visit to the church there. As we
walked, he casually asked if I had heard about the young Black girl who had killed herself due to
a racially charged encounter in Montreat. When I expressed shock and horror that such a thing
could have happened in my small hometown, he quickly corrected himself, assuring me that it
was only a rumor he had heard.
The juxtaposition of the message of hope and equality presented at the 2015 conference
with a story of such discrimination and racial violence shifted my perception of my childhood
home. It is this juxtaposition in regards to the desegregation of Montreat that demands further
study. Until 2015, the integration of Montreat did not have a widely agreed upon interpretation
or documentation. After the 2015 celebration, the Montreat Conference Center presented the
town with a narrative about desegregation in Montreat. However, as my conversation on my
walk to the book store illustrates, memories that exist in the vernacular sphere do not always
corroborate the Conference Center’s memory of desegregation and King’s visit.
As is the case with all historical narratives, each historian makes decisions about what he
or she will include and the story gets further convoluted with each retelling. As Jacqueline Hall
states in her essay The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,
“remembrance is always a form of forgetting, and the dominant narrative of the Civil Rights
Movement…distorts and suppresses as much as it reveals.”18 The dominant memory of race in
Montreat is incomplete, celebrating its triumphs and accomplishments but all too often leaving
out the struggles that still exist today. Like Hall, I hope to provide with this thesis a “more
robust, more progressive, and truer story,” 19 and to her words I would add: a more complicated
analysis of the memory of race in Montreat. My research aims to provide a more complete
understanding of the complexity of history that is not portrayed in current scholarship detailing
the relationship between memory and race in Montreat.
18 Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, "The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past," Journal of American
History 91, no. 4 (2005): 1233-263, Accessed October 22, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3660172.
Chapter 1:
From History to Memory: Snedecor Memorial Synod as a Case Study in Memory Politics
“Whatever can be said assuredly about African Americans and Presbyterianism, they do not
seem to embrace each other comfortably.”20
Gayraud S. Wilmore
The way historians engage with and retell an event is reliant on the memory of
individuals and institutions, and the creation of Snedecor Memorial Synod is a useful case study
to examine the contrasting histories of one event and the ways that these histories are shaped by
various perspectives and memories. An examination of the Synod establishes the contested
nature of chronicled history existing on race in the Presbyterian Church, which is later helpful to
identify gaps and discrepancies between different narratives of King’s visit to Montreat.
Additionally, it establishes that history and memory are not synonymous, but rather
complementary. History, as it is presented in classrooms, books and archives, may seem
canonized as permanently determined. The memory that is used to gather history’s factos,
however, is a fluid and living faculty as it is reinterpreted by new cultures, ideas and priorities.
The conclusion that memory shapes history reveals that although history appears canonized, it is
actually being constantly reevaluated. Historical narratives rely on memories but as the years
between the two grow, history solidifies and memory dissolves. In turn, remaining and affected
memory retroactively shapes newly established history as the memories evolve, age and
sometimes fade. As a result, history feels permanent to a memory’s fleeting existence. As this
paper demonstrates, this feeling is incorrect. My intention is not to over-simplify or generalize
about the origins of the Snedecor Memorial Synod, but rather to engage in an in-depth look at
history that is accepted by historians and theologians in order to later examine the memories of
Montreat residents regarding race.
The operating principles for this chapter are as follows: memory is contested—it is told
and retold until memory and history blend together to create a dynamic story of forgetfulness.
Memory is contentious—as each historian or participant draws on personal and collective
memory, contrast is found and tension is present. Finally, memory is complex and multifaceted;
history is shaped by memories that come from individuals and institutions with biases and
agendas. To untangle the contentious histories of the Snedecor Memorial Synod, this chapter will
examine the intersection of these elements by engaging with the work of Stephen R. Haynes,
Walter H. Conser, Robert J. Cain, and Gayraud S. Wilmore. These authors have contributed
three books to the study of the history of the Presbyterian Church. Each author interprets the
meaning of Snedecor Memorial Synod differently using different historical frameworks, and
together they illustrate the different portrayals of a complex history. The result is three different
depictions of history that are at times as complementary to each other, but at others are
adversarial. To describe the different orientations of these writers to the history they are
describing, I have created the terms Presbyterian Exceptionalism and Presbyterian
Conventionalism. This chapter then uses these depictions of history to develop approaches to
history linked to memory studies and its vocabulary.
For clarification, Synods are large regional governing bodies in the Presbyterian Church,
which oversee Presbyteries, the smaller district governing bodies in the Church.21 Conclusions
drawn from an analysis of the Snedecor Memorial Synod reveal fundamental aspects of the
relationship between history and memory, specifically the way that history is determined by
memory, that are crucial to an understanding of desegregation in Montreat. Snedecor Memorial
Synod was the segregated Black Synod of the Southern Presbyterian Church that originated in
1876 as the Presbytery of North and South Carolina. Over nearly fifty years its name and
purpose shifted many times to finally in 1917 become Snedecor Memorial Synod, an
independent Presbyterian Synod in North Carolina for blacks. Until its dissolution, the Synod
fell under the jurisdiction and financial control of an all-white Presbytery.
In 2012, Stephen R. Haynes published The Last Segregated Hour: The Memphis
Kneel-Ins and the Campaign for Southern Church Desegregation. His writing examines the
tumultuous and poorly publicized period in church history that witnessed the utilization of
“kneel-ins,” a method of peacefully protesting segregated Southern churches. Because he is
primarily focusing on one aspect of Southern church desegregation in Memphis, he is limited in
his analysis of regional church history. However, he devotes an entire chapter to the “time when
the bare souls of men are revealed,”22 detailing racial tension in the Southern Presbyterian
Church. He writes about the segregated Synod in North Carolina only briefly, and does so
through the historical lens what I will call Presbyterian Exceptionalism. This term refers to the
elevation of the ideology, theology and history of the Presbyterian Church at the cost of
excluding their faults and shortcomings. It is not specific to the memory of race, however; in
Haynes’s study, Presbyterian Exceptionalism is manifest in the ways that he writes about the
abolition of Snedecor and the language he uses to describe its existence. His description of the
Synod is characterized by an elevation of the Presbyterian Church in its treatment of Black
congregants, while suppressing the memory of a corrupt and discriminatory system of
segregation.
Of Snedecor Memorial Synod, Haynes writes: “While the [Southern Presbyterian
Church] had never excluded African Americans, it had adopted the practices of segregation that
came to define Southern culture after the 1870s.”23 The focus in this sentence is not the exclusion
of Blacks by the Southern Presbyterian Church. In fact, the existence of such exclusion is denied.
He qualifies the actions of the church by distinguishing between segregation and exclusion.
Haynes points out that by segregating their churches, the Southern Presbyterian Church was
merely participating in cultural norms. This permissive nod to “acceptable” racism does not
compromise the integrity or morality of the Southern Presbyterian Church any more than it does
Southern culture. Haynes goes on to claim that “unlike other white denominations in the South,
the [Southern Presbyterian Church] did not relegate its black members to a separate Church.”24
Because Haynes does not spend much time on the actual segregation, but rather chooses to focus
on the positive integration of the church years later, it is hard to understand what is meant by this
brief and complex claim. Haynes is likely referring to other Southern denominations that forced
Blacks out of their churches, in contrast to Presbyterians that opted for the creation of a Black
congregation. Again, this focus on Presbyterian Exceptionalism allows Haynes to make broad
claims without exposing the complexities of the history of a church that at one point instituted
formal separation between races in its congregations.
Haynes’s account of segregation in the Southern Presbyterian Church occupies the first
page of his chapter titled “A Time When the Bare Souls of Men Are Revealed: Southern
Presbyterians Respond.” He places the Black Presbyterian experience on the margins of the
Southern Presbyterian experience. Haynes mentions the Snedecor Memorial Synod by name only
one time and in reference to its abolition, and from there he spends the rest of his chapter
detailing the process of integration in the Southern Presbyterian Church. 25 He finds support for
his historical lens of Presbyterian Exceptionalism in minutes of meeting of the General
Assembly and the contents of Presbyterian journals of the day. His sources are official
documentation of the Presbyterian Church, which reveals the type of history that is recorded by
Presbyterian institutions as they participate in Presbyterian Exceptionalism and elevate the
participation of the church in the Civil Rights Movement. These sources reveal the memories
that have shaped the archived history of the Southern Presbyterian Church. The lens of
Presbyterian Exceptionalism is a historical perspective as Haynes writes it into his pages,
however it is a lens that has been carefully crafted by the changing memories of Southern
Presbyterians as they curated and cared for their archives. The memories with which Haynes
engages to create a history of the Southern Presbyterian Church adopts one lens in the
examination of a complex narrative, and it is later contested by other historians working on the
same topic.
In Presbyterians in North Carolina: Race, Politics, and Religious Identity in Historical
Perspective, co-authors Walter H. Conser and Robert J. Cain write what they call “the first
comprehensive overview of North Carolina Presbyterians to appear in over a hundred years.”26
While Conser’s and Cain’s title indicates that many aspects of the Southern Presbyterian Church
will be examined, they spend the majority of the book on the defining role that race has played in
the history of the Presbyterian Church in North Carolina. They spend time analyzing the
“layered” 27 identity of Southern Presbyterians as they interacted with and alienated their Black
neighbors. In a near contrast to Haynes, Conser and Cain explore the systematic segregation that
25 Haynes, The Last Segregated Hour, 86.
26 Conser and Cain, Presbyterians in North Carolina, XII.
permeated the Southern Presbyterian Church from the late nineteenth century through the Jim
Crow era.
The authors’ exploration of the creation of Snedecor Memorial Synod is significantly
more expansive than that of Haynes, which makes sense given that Haynes focuses on Church
kneel-ins and Conser and Cain are attempting a comprehensive history. While Haynes uses
language and phrasing full of optimism for progressive church forefathers, Conser and Cain take
a more complex approach to Presbyterians’ past. The two authors describe the background of
what was called the “Negro Synod.”28 In 1876, the Southern Presbyterian Church created the
Presbytery of North and South Carolina as one of five independent Southern presbyteries for
Blacks. However, Conser and Cain note that while while the organization was recognized by the
Southern Presbyterian Church, there was no formal synodical membership associated with its
formation. Conser and Cain interpret the emergence of the first Black Presbyterian congregation
as a product of white supremacy and economic necessity. They write that Southern Presbyterians
were “committed to the view that Southern Whites had better insight…into the needs of Southern
blacks” and created Sunday schools for freed slaves to keep Black tithes and offerings in their
congregations.29
Freed slaves did not want to remain under yet another white institution, Conser and Cain
explain, and so Black congregants began leaving the Southern Presbyterian Church to create
their own institutions and their numbers in the Church dwindled. In 1897, the segregated
Afro-American Presbyterian Synod was given the ability to extend synodical membership to Black
congregations. In 1917 the Black presbytery had 14 churches and 10 ministers. Its name was
28 Haynes, The Last Segregated Hour, 86.
changed to the Afro-American Synod and shortly after to Snedecor Memorial Synod.30 In
contrast to Haynes, Conser and Cain are careful to give the historical context for Snedecor
Memorial Synod before giving a description of its effects: “Sequestered from fellowship with
whites, denied equality in ecclesiastical councils, and punished for real or perceived infractions
of social taboos, Southern blacks found refuge in their own institutions.”31 This strong language
places the Presbyterian church at fault for the mistreatment of their Black congregants and
describes the segregated Synod as a place of refuge from the racism and oppression experienced
in the Southern Presbyterian Church. Conser and Cain recognize that Snedecor was not the result
of Presbyterian Exceptionalism but rather discrimination and inequality.
The Southern Presbyterian Church presented by Conser and Cain is drastically different
than that of Haynes’s scholarship. While Haynes perpetuates Presbyterian Exceptionalism,
Conser and Cain attempt to engage with the complex layers of inequality in the Southern
Presbyterian Church. They paint a picture of a Southern institution behaving in accordance with
Southern culture, though they do not provide the same optimistic allowances for this behavior
that Haynes does. As it stands, the contrast between Haynes’s and Conser’s and Cain’s work
demonstrates the contested, contentious, and complex nature of history as the work of scholars
on the same event yields different narratives. While Haynes details the creation of Snedecor
through a lens of Presbyterian Exceptionalism, Conser and Cain adopt a history that recognizes
the importance of the layered Presbyterian identity, tending towards what I call Presbyterian
Conventionalism. This refers to the historical lens through which the Southern Presbyterian
Church is represented as equally discriminatory as the culture around it. Presbyterian
Conventionalism purports that while the Church did nothing extraordinary to solve the injustice
of segregation, there was nothing particularly grievous about the brand of exclusion adopted by
the Southern Presbyterian Church in comparison with other churches or institutions at the time.
The direct comparison between these two modes of scholarship is complicated by the
addition of a third book by Gayraud S. Wilmore called Black and Presbyterian: The Heritage
and the Hope. Wilmore’s book was commissioned by the Southeastern Region of the National
Black Presbyterian Caucus (NBPC) in 1994 to educate white Presbyterians who “had limited, if
any, understanding and appreciation of the Black presence within Presbyterianism” in a nation
where “racism seems unabated.”32 As such, the representation of history takes the format of an
interactive Bible study, with discussion questions at the end of each chapter. Wilmore intends his
book to be read in a collective setting and adopts an adaptable lens of history as it allows and
encourages its reader to utilize their own memories in order to actively participate in the
formation of history through discussion. Wilmore takes a different approach from both Haynes
and Conser and Cain. Instead of claiming a comprehensive history, Wilmore writes that “what
follows below is not the study of African American Christianity but the beginning . . . a tentative
experimental model that will lend itself to further discussion and research.”33 Wilmore engages
with this history inductively, and in a way that accounts for the fluidity of memory and allows
movement and transition. His history is not stagnant or finalized, but rather is in conversation
with the present, in classrooms and congregations, to be reshaped and molded by memory.
While Wilmore does not mention Snedecor Memorial Synod by name, his work is still
relevant to the creation of Snedecor as a case study. He consistently writes about the Southern
Presbyterian Church’s marginalization of its Black congregants through Synods and other means
in its institutions, including separate Black seminaries. There is a significant difference in the
32 Wilmore, Black and Presbyterian, I.
ways that Wilmore describes the moral shortcomings of the Presbyterian church from that of
other historians. As an example he writes: “It took two hundred years from the days of Calvin
and Knox for a General Assembly of their church to condemn slavery. Even that first definitive
statement, made after a hot debate in 1818, was weakened by qualifications and applied no
sanctions against church members and ministers who held slaves.” 34 Wilmore paints the
Presbyterian Church in a negative light in regards to its relationship to race over the centuries.
He does not insert rhetorical allowances or attempt to blame Southern culture for the inexcusable
racism exhibited, but rather engages with the complexities of history and memory. He goes on to
say that “no church was more high-sounding and profound in its biblical and theological analysis
of slavery or did less about it.”35 Wilmore uniquely captures the tension between the lens of
Presbyterian Exceptionalism—Presbyterian elevation—and Presbyterian Conventionalism—
segregation and a lack of action.
While Haynes used the historical lens of Presbyterian Exceptionalism, and Conser and
Cain go a step further to grapple with Presbyterian Conventionalism, Wilmore recognizes the
challenges presented by both of these lenses. His writing implicitly proposes that perhaps
Southern Presbyterians can cultivate a meaningful Conventionalism. Rather than engage only in
an elevation or a shaming of Southern Presbyterianism, Wilmore proposes a profound paradigm
shift. His scholarship complements that of Haynes and Conser and Cain by placing Black
experience on the margins of the overall Presbyterian experience. While Presbyterian
Exceptionalism and Presbyterian Conventionalism discuss Black Presbyterians as a marginal
community in the Church, Wilmore highlights the complexities and the challenges of the Black
experience in a primarily white institution. The contrast of these two lenses, as well as
34 Wilmore, Black and Presbyterian, 33.
Wilmore’s different focus in his account of the history of Southern Presbyterianism demonstrates
the multiple approaches that can be taken to recounting one historical instance or event.
Ultimately the establishment of these two lenses in addition to Wilmore’s mediation of
the two, allow readers to understand Presbyterian segregation and the creation of Snedecor
Memorial Synod and to demonstrate the different types of memory with which scholars engage
and participate in as they work to interpret history. This same contestation is present surrounding
the memory of desegregation and the 1965 Christian Action Conference in Montreat. Memory
can come from different sources and be stored in different ways, and as a result, memories can
be used and interpreted differently each time they are examined. John Bodnar writes about
memory in his book, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in
the Twentieth Century. In his first chapter, “The Memory Debate: An Introduction,” Bodnar
defines three different types of memory: official, vernacular, and public. It is these types of
memory that are acting in Montreat to create a contested, contentious and complex account of the
history and memories of Martin Luther King’s visit.
Bodnar’s official memory can be seen in the work of Haynes as he engages with sources
such as General Assembly Minutes and different Presbyterian Journals. As Bodnar defines it,
official memory contains the “concerns of all cultural leaders or authorities of all levels of
society . . . [with a] common interest in social unity.”36 It perpetuates existing institutions and
demonstrates a loyalty to the status quo. It is a “restatement of reality in ideal rather than
complex or ambiguous terms.”37 As Haynes acknowledges a stormy Presbyterian past but
excuses it by blaming it on Southern culture he is participating in retelling Presbyterian
36 John E. Bodnar, The Memory Debate: An Introduction. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration,
and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 13-20.
Exceptionalism that is facilitated by official memory stored in and accredited by Presbyterian
institutions.
This official memory is put on display in Montreat’s retelling of the Civil Rights
Movement. The Montreat Conference Center is the town’s most authoritative institution and they
are in charge of creating and disseminating an interpretation of Montreat’s history. This
institution directly benefits from the money of tourists and out-of-town conference attendees, and
so their “interest in social unity” and “restatement of reality in ideal . . . terms” is in an effort to
promote a perception of the town as a Presbyterian home that the church can be proud of. It is a
formidable creator of official memory.
Next to official memory, Bodnar presents vernacular memory as an “array of specialized
interests that are grounded in parts of a whole…what reality feels like rather than what ita should
be like.”38 Vernacular memory is diverse and changing and it often challenges the narrative of
official memory. The work that best fits this definition of vernacular memory is that of Conser
and Cain. While they sometimes present an official memory as well, they claim to present the
vernacular memory of the Presbyterian church by drawing on oral histories and personal letters
to support the story they tell. In contrast to Haynes, Conser and Cain demonstrate what the
reality of the Southern Presbyterian Church felt like rather than what it should have been, and
thus are drawing on vernacular memory to create their history. In Montreat, vernacular memories
and perceptions are found most directly in the oral histories of residents and visitors. These
vernacular memories sometimes confirm the narrative of official memories and other times
undermine the power that institutions have.
The intersection of official and vernacular memory, Bodnar argues, is called public
memory. Public memory reveals “fundamental issues about the entire existence of a society: its
organization, structure of power, and the very meaning of its past and present…an argument
about the interpretation of reality.”39 Wilmore’s work demonstrates that he draws on public
memory, but goes beyond it to reveal that our current conception of memory studies is
insufficient to define the entire dynamic process of writing history. Wilmore uses both
vernacular and official memory to write, but he also includes discussion questions at the end of
each chapter. By doing this he is not only using memory but creating it as well. It is also
noteworthy that Wilmore’s book Black and Presbyterian was commissioned by an institution,
the National Black Presbyterian Caucus. Wilmore acknowledges and creates vernacular memory
while himself being created by an institution. As one examines the intersection of memory and
history, the complexity and contestation of history becomes apparent.
This thesis argues that public memory is not the intersection of official and vernacular
memories but rather the dynamic interaction between the two concepts. These two terms do not
intersect in Montreat with equal weight but rather shape each other as official memory holds
power over local vernacular perceptions. Now, with memory terms defined and the establishment
of the contestation and complexity of history, this thesis will examine the history of the
segregation of Montreat and Presbyterianism. As a town full of vernacular memories but
dominated by an institution, Montreat merits further study to determine what lens is used to
interpret its history and how each type of memory has influenced the way race is depicted.
Chapter Two:
Official Actions and Their Disintegration
“They wanted Martin Luther King, Jr and others to appear as people [who were] playing by all
of the rules, that they [were] not challenging government and institutions.”40
Congressman John Lewis
The ideas and memories that have formed in Montreat are a product of both official and
vernacular memories. There is not a clean dichotomy between official and vernacular memories,
since (as Bodnar notes) they reorient, intersect, contradict and relate to each other in complicated
ways. The nature and power of memory in Montreat can be seen through the study of the
interaction between these two types of memory. Vernacular memories sometimes corroborate or
even overlap with the memory of institutions in Montreat while at other times these two genres
of memories diverge. Moreover, certain individuals in Montreat have embodied or spoken for an
institution, even as they engaged with and perceived events vernacularly. As complicated as this
can be, distinguishing between the two forms of memory is a helpful place to start in order to
form a better understanding of memory. Differentiating between types of memories reveals
where slippage may occur between the official and the vernacular and therefore helps us
formulate a more nuanced understanding of the memory of King’s visit in Montreat.
Memory is multi-faceted. Many concepts work together to create the contested,
contentious and controversial remembrance of race in Montreat. Official actions relevant to this
thesis surrounded the 1965 Christian Action Conference and King’s speech at the event, as well
as the planning and executing of the 2015 conference commemorating King’s visit. These
actions were interpreted as they were happening in various vernacular perceptions of the official
action. Some of these vernacular perceptions have faded from memory, some have evolved, and
some still exist as vernacular memories of Montreat residents. They are demonstrated through
oral histories conducted with members of the community. Official memories, on the other hand,
have been circulated by the dominant institutions in Montreat—namely the Montreat Conference
Center which is overseen by the board of the Mountain Retreat Association. The Conference
Center works closely with the Presbyterian Heritage Center, which hosts exhibits and archives
detailing the history of the town and of the Southern Presbyterian Church. The relationships
between these elements of memory and the people and institutions that exist in Montreat are
complex.
Consequently, they are easily oversimplified. This oversimplification leads to an overly
reductive conclusion about the relationship between vernacular and official memories, namely
that vernacular memories are directly shaped and oriented by the authority of official actions and
memories. However, this direct and top-down flow of power overlooks the complex interaction
and fragile balance of power between vernacular and official memories, particularly in Montreat.
Bodnar argues that between official and vernacular memories we find a third type of memory:
public memory. He calls public memory the “intersection of official and vernacular cultural
expressions.”41 People use this intersection to make sense of traditions, concepts and in the case
of Montreat, contested and complex pasts. Of public memory, Bodnar writes, “people can use it
as a cognitive device to mediate competing interpretations and privilege some explanations over
others.”42 In examining competing narratives about the 1965 Christian Action Conference in
Montreat, this chapter introduces and explores an alternative to Bodnar’s definition of public
memory. I contend that it is the weighted dynamic interaction, rather than the equally
proportioned static intersection, between official and vernacular memories that yields the public
memory of race in Montreat. The extent to which public memory favors official or vernacular
narratives reveals power dynamics and cultural priorities in Montreat.
The aim of this chapter and the one that follows is to re-conceptualize the relationship
between official and vernacular memory be examining official and vernacular narratives of race
in Montreat. First this chapter will elaborate on the stories that institutions in Montreat tell about
the history of race, integration and Martin Luther King, Jr’s visit. These stories are resilient tools
for the creation and preservation of official memory, although they are not invulnerable to
critique. The chapter will then examine ways that the institutional narrative is undermined by its
own internal inconsistencies as well as vernacular perspectives in Montreat. There are competing
narratives of race in the town, and many narratives do not corroborate that of the official memory
that is broadcasted by the Montreat Conference Center. This chapter will argue that this conflict
of memory weakens the power of official memory in Montreat. Finally, the chapter will make
the case that the 2015 conference Dr. King’s Unfinished Agenda: A Teach-In for Rededicating
Ourselves to the Dream was a concerted effort made by Montreat Conference Center to enact
power to reorient the vernacular perspectives of race in the town. Official memory in Montreat is
seen in institutional claims, slippages, and actions.
Institutional Stories
To create and maintain their own cultural power in the town, institutions tell stories that
provide members of the community with uncomplicated explanations of complicated events. The
institutional outputs surrounding race in Montreat are simple and powerful as they circulate in
the official memory of the town. Of course, institutional outputs are not constant and they are not
perfect. Yet these stories are incredibly resilient as they stand against time and vernacular
goals of the institution, and they can be weakened and undermined by conflicting official
memory or vernacular perspectives.
To accommodate and celebrate the 50th anniversary of King’s visit to the town the
Montreat Conference Center’s narrative of race shifted. The institutions in Montreat developed a
scripted history and memory of race in Montreat, which was ultimately performed and put on
display at the commemorative conference. The narrative that the institutions in Montreat put
forth regarding race is a and organized around King’s visit. This scripted history is comprised of
three acts, each one a period of racial tension or reconciliation in Montreat: before King, his visit
to the town, and the profound and positive results of King’s speech. According to the first act,
segregation was resolved even before King’s visit. By 1960, policies condoning segregation were
struck down in Montreat. The second act in this institutional script stages King’s visit to
Montreat. In this act, the town welcomed King with open arms, congruent with the integration
that had already occurred. The third and final act in the institutional narrative is rooted in the
perhaps counterintuitive premise that King’s visit was a turning point for race relations and a
culminating event born out of a slow acceptance of integration in Montreat. Combined, these acts
have incredible persuasive power, although none accurately capture the complexities of the
cultural atmosphere surrounding the visit of the great Civil Rights leader and its consequences.
According to the Montreat Conference Center’s website, 1949-1960 was the isolated
period of time during which “policies which condoned racial segregation in Montreat were
resolved.”43 This date is listed in a timeline of notable historical events in the town. On a
different Conference Center webpage, the “About Us” page, the website notes that “Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. spoke here in 1965 after policies condoning racial segregation in Montreat were
resolved.”44 The entire history of racial inequality in Montreat summarized in two bullet points
telling a story of resolution. Racial segregation in Montreat was simply and finally “resolved” by
1960. This claim, which situates King’s visit as a fulfillment of Montreat’s new policies rather
than an event that transformed those policies, appear on the Conference Center’s official website,
which is visited by all interested attendees, conference speakers and church-goers. When
“Montreat” is typed in to a search engine, this is the first website to pop up. The simplicity of
this narrative is digestible to vaguely interested visitors. The Montreat Conference Center tells a
story that satisfies curiosity without accounting for the contested timelines or the adversarial
testimonials and oral histories that might undermine the authority of their story.
Along side the Conference Center’s story of a town that had resolved race by 1960 is the
Presbyterian Heritage Center’s story of a town that welcomed Martin Luther King Jr. with open
arms and minds. The Presbyterian Heritage Center is the home of most of the archives of the old
Southern Presbyterian Church, located in the heart of Montreat, and is “dedicated to the history
of the Presbyterian and Reformed heritage and its worldwide mission, as well as the history of
Montreat.”45 Their mission statement continues: “We will offer educational opportunities, not
only to the tens of thousands who come to Montreat each year, but many others—children,
youth, and adults—who seek to learn about Presbyterian history and mission….”46 The center
exists as an educational opportunity for visitors, and the 2015 King Conference brought
unprecedented numbers into the Heritage Center.
44 “About Us,” Montreat Conference Center, accessed November 16, 2015
http://www.montreat.org/inquire/about-us
45 "About Us," Presbyterian Heritage Center, accessed December 2, 2015, http://www.phcmontreat.org/aboutus.htm.
In preparation for the 2015 celebratory conference, the Presbyterian Heritage Center
curated a special exhibit on the history of Civils Rights in Montreat. The display at the Heritage
Center traces Civil Rights in the Presbyterian Church back to the 19th century. However, the
primary narrative of this display is the highlight reel of the relationship between Civil Rights and
Presbyterians. The display starts with early reformers who brought Christianity to Native
Americans in the New World and ends with the visit of King to Montreat in 1965. This last
panel boasts pictures from various angles of the great leader standing on familiar ground, mere
yards away from the Heritage Center itself. The choice to end the exhibit with King and his visit
emphasizes the narrative of the Christian Action Conference as the culminating event of the
acceptance of racial integration in Montreat.
In addition to visual depictions of King’s visit, the final panel is home for letters to and
from the Conference Center regarding King’s visit. An overview of these letters provides a story
of peace and simplicity: King was well received at the conference. Malcolm Calhoun, the man
responsible for King’s invitation, responded to a letter of concern which stated:
Church people [should] be thoroughly acquainted with movements taking place in
our land looking to the removal of racial injustice. It is our judgment that our
people should have an opportunity to hear some of the Civil Rights leaders in
person and have an opportunity to ask questions and, therefore, be in a better
position to know what our Christian witness should be with respect to the Civil
Rights Movement, and with respect to the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ.47
This response firmly places the Montreat Conference Center behind King and is used by the
Heritage Center to perpetuate the idea of the town’s support for King’s impending visit.
Calhoun’s words of encouragement and firm support of King in 1965 enabled the story told by
the Conference Center in 2015. Calhoun presented a town that was ready for Civil Rights and
racial equality. Even in 1965, Montreat told a story of unity and cooperation with the vision of
the Civil Rights leader.
In addition to Calhoun’s letter, the creators of the display chose letters written after
King’s visit that demonstrate the transformation that occurred. Excerpts from two attendees of
the 1965 conference praise Montreat:
May I express to you my gratitude for the privilege of hearing Dr. Martin Luther
King, JR at Montreat last week [sic]. To me it seemed a fine Christian gesture of
friendship and concern for all God’s children…though I may not always agree
with all that Dr. King says or does, I believe he is a truly Christian gentleman,
dedicated to a cause, filled with a sense of mission. We shall all be praying for
him.48
In another letter, a woman writes: “Thank you so much for planning this very exciting
conference. Even our children thought that hearing Dr. King was ‘The next best thing to the .!’”
49 The selected pieces on display at the Presbyterian Heritage Center (which acts as an arm of the
Conference Center) establish that the Montreat Conference Center, spoken for by Rev. Calhoun,
stood unconditionally behind King and his words. The display also makes clear that those who
attended the conference appreciated him as well. Although they did not necessarily “agree with
all that Dr. King says or does,” they were thankful for his shared wisdom imparted to the
Presbyterian Church in Montreat and welcomed his criticism of de facto segregation in the town.
Not only does this display give power and vision to the narrative of King’s welcome in
Montreat, it also aids the institution’s third narrative, which is King’s visit as the turning point
for Civil Rights in Montreat and the larger church. The Presbyterian Heritage Center’s display
ends with King’s visit. According to this exhibit, the 1965 Christian Action Conference was an
enactment of the end of racial inequality and injustice in the town. Another letter written by
Calhoun states: “it is our feeling that the time has come for the voice of Dr. King to be heard by
the [Christian Action] conference group at Montreat…Because of the stirrings both within and
without the Church, we feel that a group of Presbyterians during the Conference period in
Montreat should have the privilege of hearing this man.”50 The display positions King’s visit at
the perfect time in the life of Montreat; “the time has come” to hear King’s words and his words
in Montreat were the logical next step in integrating the town. This further positions King as the
culmination of racial injustice and the turning point towards equality for the town.
This narrative was also established and perpetuated at the 2015 conference: Dr. King’s
Unfinished Agenda: A Teach-In for Rededicating Ourselves to The Dream. In his opening
remarks, Richard Dubose, president of the Mountain Retreat Association, admitted that:
“certainly Montreat has struggled historically . . . we certainly acknowledge that there is a long
road ahead” but King’s 1965 visit was a “pivotal event in the life of the Presbyterian Church.”51
The celebration of King’s visit positioned the event as the turning point for Civil Rights in the
town. Every segregated home, every racially exclusive church had been preparing for his words.
These three chronological acts—simple resolution of segregation, King’s welcome, and
the perfect timing of King’s visit—contribute to an overarching narrative that defines the way
50 Malcolm Calhoun, letter to Rev. William J. Fogelman displayed at Presbyterian Heritage Center, Montreat, NC, November 6, 1964.
that official memory regards race in Montreat. These stories are largely resilient in the face of
critique and contradiction because of the power behind their orator. This narrative of race adopts
the lens of Presbyterian Exceptionalism to refer specifically to the process of integration in
Montreat and King’s visit in particular. At the general exclusion of their shortcomings, the
Montreat Conference Center and Heritage Center have scripted a narrative of race that elevates
the ideology, theology and history of the town. The Conference Center and Presbyterian Heritage
Center have financial and personnel resources to demonstrate Montreat’s history through this
lens that contradicting and complicating vernacular perspectives do not. As each story is
communicated through the internet, exhibits and conferences that celebrate the history of the
town, they grow in power and influence over the official memory of the town. However, despite
their influence, these stories are not impervious to critique.
There are vulnerabilities in the stories that Montreat institutions tell and the memories
they promote. The inconsistencies and complexities that are unaccounted for by official memory
are called slippages. There are two types of slippages in the official memory of race in Montreat:
internal and external. Internal slippages are places where different institutional claims contradict
each other, or where they vary enough to fracture the power of institutional outputs. In Montreat,
internal slippages are places where the institutional voice stutters and are found in inconsistent
dates, confusing historical records and missing archives. External slippages are challenges
presented to official memory by vernacular perceptions such as oral histories.
Internal slippages are plentiful and potentially powerful in Montreat. If these slippages
became part of the publicized institutional output, they would undermine the legitimacy of the
simplicity that official memory prefers. Because institutions have some control over their output,
institutional outputs and confront it with a complex reality. The simplicity of “resolution” that
the Montreat Conference Center’s website promotes is challenged by a book written in 1986 by
Calvin Grier Davis, who was President of the Mountain Retreat Association from 1959-1972.
His book, titled Montreat: A Retreat for Renewal 1947-1972 immediately discloses a more
complex, though still incomplete, history than those advertised by the Conference Center and the
Heritage Center:
As I begin to do research and write, I am constrained to observe that the glory and
sins of the church may appear in the story of Montreat…I must also observe that
it is in [Montreat] that churchmen are most likely to be themselves, to express
their goodness, their consecration, their compassion, their deep commitment to
Christ and His Church. In [Montreat] churchmen may also express their
prejudices, their ambition, their pride.52
Davis recognizes the moral timidity taking place in Montreat that is left largely unaddressed by
the Conference Center, however he observes the failure of the “churchmen,” not the failure of
the church or town as an institution. Rather than highlight churchmen’s goodness and
compassion, Davis acknowledges the tension that is present in Montreat. However, this
acknowledgement lets the Conference Center off the hook by focusing his blame on individuals
for the shortcomings in social justice. He engages with the glory and the sins of people, rather
than that of the institutions.
It is the “sins” he writes about that present internal slippages in the official narrative of
race in Montreat. Most of the dates along the timeline of integration that Davis presents match
that of institutional outputs (the Presbyterian Heritage Center display, namely). However, Davis
ends his chapter on race in Montreat by noting “The Montreat ‘Negro Policy’ was rescinded by
the Board of Directors on February 10, 1965.”53 This contradicts the claim of the Conference
Center’s website that segregation was resolved in 1960, and the Conference Center makes no
mention of this date as pivotal. Additionally, King is not mentioned in Davis’s book at all.
Rather, his book is a record of legislative history in Montreat. The desegregation of Montreat
was not simple and it was not painless; the process was slow and challenging. There was
resistance. The simplicity of the resolution is challenged by historical records, and this challenge
undermines the authority of the institutional output as it directs official memory.
It was the same Montreat Conference Center Board of Directors who Davis claimed
rescinded Montreat’s “Negro Policy” who refused a request of the 1954 General Assembly to
desegregate all Presbyterian institutions.54 This points to another internal slippage in the
institutional outputs in Montreat. A careful examination of historical records of and in Montreat
do not communicate the story that the institution is trying to tell. Official memory elevates the
simplicity and clarity behind the decision for desegregation, and the continued effort to welcome
Black Presbyterians into the town. However, General Assembly minutes and historical texts
indicate that the decision was hard fought and controversial. Contrary to the letters displayed at
the Presbyterian Heritage Center, even the decision to invite King was contested, and the “board
of the MRA voted a resolution asking that he not be invited.”55 This resolution was defeated
thirty-five to sixty-five.56
The slippage, or vulnerability, in these narratives is not presented in a denial of
complexity or reality; rather, it is that the institutional output does not mention it. The display,
53 Calvin Grier Davis, Montreat, A Retreat for Renewal, 62.
54 Joel L. Alvis, “Religion & Race: Southern Presbyterians, 1946-1983,” (master’s thesis, University of Alabama, 1994).
55 Pete Peery in discussion with the author. November 29, 2015.
the conference, and the official website were all created in such a way as to elevate and simplify
the relationship between Montreat and Civil Rights. This narrative is more powerful and resilient
than denial. Denial of challenges to the Civil Rights Movement or of racial tension in Montreat
can be easily refuted by an examination of the archives and historical records. However, the
resiliency of institutional output in Montreat comes from its partial credibility. There is truth in
the official memory, but the whole truth is omitted.
An additional internal slippage in the official memory of race in Montreat is physical
rather than ideological. The Presbyterian Heritage Center used to be the Presbyterian Historical
Foundation. Shortly after the Northern and Southern Presbyterian churches merged to create the
Presbyterian Church (USA), the Historical Foundation in Montreat held many archives and
records of the old Southern Presbyterian Church. After reconsideration, the Historical
Foundation shifted to become the Presbyterian Heritage Center and began to house remaining
archives of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Ron Vinson, director of the modern Heritage Center
discussed this shift and its affect on memory in Montreat:
When the northern and southern church merged in ‘83 many Southern church
members believed that part of the quid pro quo was that the archives would
remain forever in Montreat, when in fact that was not necessarily the written case
in anybody's agreement. It became expensive. So the question was: "Do you close
the Philadelphia operation of the Presbyterian Historical Society," which had
started in 1852 and suffers from lack of space and high cost of operating in a
major East Coast city? Or, do you close Montreat? Well, the long and short is
after waffling for three years, eventually the recommendation by staff at the
