united church of christ oral history collection emi

UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

SEMI-VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW 39 TAPE 39: SIDES A & B

Former Interim National President, UCC

Former National Secretary, UCC

Former VP, Board of Homeland Ministries

African American Minister, CC Churches

Talks About

His Private Life

His Life in the Church

The Union

Interviewee Rev., Dr. Joseph H. Evans

Interviewer Nathaniel Guptill

Interview Date: August 20, 1986

Interview Location: Portland, Maine

Interview Length 90 minutes

Interviewed for: United Church of Christ Historical Council

Transcribed by: The Legacy Program

Transcription Length 51 pages

Transcription Date: March 30, 2007

Edited by: Bridgette A. Kelly

Edit date: May 12, 2009

UCC Oral History Collection: Interview 39 - Evans, Rev., Dr. J. H. 2

[START OF TAPE 39: SIDE A] [BEGINNING OF INTERVIEW 39]

Nathaniel Guptill: This interview is to explore the life of Joseph H. Evans, 125 St.

Paul Street, Brookline, Massachusetts. The third President of the United

Church of Christ, if you just count the ones that held that office by

themselves, and the fifth, if you count the Co-Presidents who served from

1957 to1961. The person who is doing the interviewing is Nathaniel

Guptill, the President of the Congregational Christian Historical Society

and a member of the Historical Council, long time colleague and friend of

Dr. Evans. So probably first names will be the rule in the conversation.

This is going to be a cherished part of the archives of the United Church of

Christ, Joe. And let’s begin right at the beginning.

[Sound of Chuckling]

Where were you born? And tell us about your childhood.

Rev., Dr. Joseph H Evans: Well Nat, I was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. There

is such a place.

NG: How about that.

JHE: On August 15, 1915. My parents… My mother was a schoolteacher.

My father, then, was a headwaiter in the local club. My twin brothers were

born fourteen months after I was. Shortly thereafter, we moved to of all

places, Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

I’ve never really fully understood that move. By that time, my father

had passed the postal… post office examination and became a letter

carrier, which for black folk then was a significant job. So that I was really

born into a middle class black home, because teachers and postal

employees had good solid jobs back during the depression, which is when

I grew up.


JHE: But to make a long story short, we moved to Ft. Wayne, Indiana…

spent several years there. Those were hard years, because Ft. Wayne,

ethnically and racially was not a good town. And I learned how to run,

cause I was chased by a little boy next door, who wanted to get me and

beat me up.

NG: Because you were black?

JHE: Because I was black. Even with my low visibility, I was nevertheless,

black. Negro, then we were known as. But then we moved to Chicago in

1922. I say, I don’t really know but evidently my father was able to

negotiate a transfer. And the move to Chicago was really traumatic. I’ll

never forget it.

We moved to the south side of Chicago in 1922. That was only three

years after the Chicago riots. Chicago was a tense, dangerous town.

Well I grew up in that so I know what the ghetto is all about. I was

nurtured in it, grew up… made it through it.

NG: Ft. Wayne wasn’t a ghetto I take it, because…

JHE: No, it was a small town, but very provincial, very narrow, but moving…

all white primarily. The few black folk who were there were isolated,

discriminated against. Life was poor. It was hard. It was difficult.

So my family moved to Chicago for a better way of life. But, where did

you move? You moved into the south side. We moved into a four-story

apartment building and I remember stepping out on the back steps… the

back porch.

First time I had ever been that high in life. I looked down and it looked

like I was a million miles in the air. And, looked out on alleys and

tenements and all of that.


JHE: Those really weren’t quite tenements then, they were lovely

apartments. Seven rooms, two baths, huge apartments. Well, that’s

where we lived for a number of years. Where I went to the Francis Willard

Elementary School. However, it was also there that I was introduced to the

necessity of belonging to a gang in order to survive. It was a survival

thing, you had to belong or otherwise you couldn’t exist in that community.

Well then we made several moves. If you knew the flow of

population… of black population in Chicago… the move was south along a

narrow corridor which is now Martin Luther King Drive and State Street.

And we moved south into what was then Woodlawn. And made several

moves. Went to McKosh Elementary School and then to Carter, and I

graduated from Carter and then went to Inglewood High School and from

Inglewood began my undergraduate education at old Lewis Institute,

which is now defunct. It no longer exists.

Was out of school for about two years. In that period my parents

separated. My father left, so there was the problem of a broken home.

But we three boys remained with my mother. I was out of school for two

years.

NG: This was after you’d started college or between high school and

college?

JHE: No, this was after I started college. But you know, Nat, it was almost…

I began to see a pattern… as I look back the pattern began to develop. I

don’t know if it was fortuitous or whether there was a directive going on in

my life, but at the very time that I was fooling around and not doing very

much in college, our circumstances required that I drop out and go to

work.


JHE: I went to work at Walgreen Drug Store. Being a soda jerker and

hustling bottles and doing the manual labor that a person does in a drug

store. Then one day I said to myself, “I’ve got to get back to school. I’m not

getting anywhere. There must be more in life for me than this.” And it was

than that I called my Grandmother, who was still living, then eighty years

old, and still living in Kalamazoo. And I asked her, could I come up and be

interviewed at Western … No, it was then Western State Teachers

College in Kalamazoo. It’s now Western Michigan University.

NG: Is this your maternal grandfather or grandmother or…

JHE: My maternal Grandmother, my Mother’s mother. I don’t really know

very much about my father’s people. He had a brother who moved to

Kalamazoo, whom I knew. An uncle of mine, I didn’t know him well, but he

was there.

To make a long story short, my grandmother worked for a professor of

Biology, a Mrs. Hadley. I’ll never forget her. And she made it possible for

me to get back into school… back into college, and gave me a job - of all

things tending her garden.

NG: [Laughs]

JHE: I didn’t know anything about roses, and plants and fertilizer and

mowing the lawn. I was a city boy. You know. I was born and reared on

the asphalts, on the streets of Chicago. That, plus getting a job working at

the farm… the farm that the school owned… It’s in the article that was

written about me in AD magazine some years later… where I cleaned

chicken coops and what not in order to get a few dollars, just to keep life

going. Then I learned to wait table and what not. But then I made it

through and graduated from Western State Teachers College in 1939.


JHE: Well it was in that period that I began to feel these rumblings within my

life, these churnings. I was never hit over the head, you know. Go preach!

NG: [Laughs]

JHE: It was a quite cautious, even, slow development. I got interested in

youth work, which… in a youth group that was meeting, I remember, in the

First Baptist Church. It was not our church. We have a strong church in

Kalamazoo. But, there was a youth group, and they took me in.

It was open group and back in those late thirties this was an

accommodation. This was an achievement. But that exposure, plus going

back home summers to my… by then I had joined the Church of the Good

Shepherd in Chicago. We had moved not far from there in about our fourth

move in the city.

When my father left we needed a smaller apartment. We didn’t need

those big apartments that we’d lived in and we lived a couple of blocks

from the then newly come into being Church of the Good Shepherd which

was located on the corner of… 5700 Prairie Avenue, which was right in

middle of that corridor I was describing--- ---a little while ago.

NG: ---Was that a Congregational Church?---

JHE: No, it was a ??? Presbyterian Church

NG: Presbyterian Church.


JHE: But we bought it. The Chicago Congregational Union helped the

congregations that had come into being, first as the Langley Avenue

Church, then they moved over to Michigan Avenue. And then this building

became available, because the white people were fleeing before the rising

tide of color that was coming. And it was an excellent building.

Well I had joined as a youngster. Became a member of the usher

board. So between my exposure to Dr. Harold Kingsley the first minister

who was quite a preacher and pastor, and the work that I did on my own

as a student at Western State Teachers College. All of those culminated in

feelings that I ought… I might go into the ministry. I was confirmed in that

fact when I went into my first practice teaching class in early elementary

education. I said this is not for me.

[Sound of Laughter]

And so then I applied to three seminaries. Chicago, I was right there. I

applied to Hartford and to Yale Divinity School. Well, when Yale accepted

me, it was almost like a dream, you know. A kid off the streets of Chicago,

to be received… to be accepted at Yale Divinity School was a fantastic

possibility. Like Abraham, I went out not knowing where I was going. But I

went on--- ---faith.

NG: ---Before you get to Yale. Tell me about... Did your folks have a living

church connection? Or was it kind of just young peoples sort of thing?

JHE: I’m glad you asked that question. Because I’ve often said that if it were

not for the fact that I was born in Christian Science--- I was nurtured in the

Science Church, basic exposure to the Bible, to rigorous teaching, as

Science is and does, and promotes.


JHE: But it was not until years later, when I took a course under Liston

Pope, on the emerging religious sects that I understood Science for what it

was. I had questions, and the questions drove me out of it, because my

teacher I’ll never forget, Mrs. Ring, as long as I live. She said, “Mr. Evans,

you ask too many questions.”

NG: [Chuckles]

JHE: But I kept asking. There was this inquiring mind of mine. I could not

understand Mary Baker Eddy and Jesus Christ, and the two… In the mean

time I had joined on my own. I was the first in my family to join the Church

of the Good Shepherd. I broke… I was the first one. I was the oldest of

three children, of three boys. So then we all followed. But I made the

break.

So I guess there were three things. My nurture in Science, joining the

Church of the Good Shepherd, then a Congregational church, and my

going back to college at Western State Teachers College. Those three

combined to nurture me. And from somewhere I got the encouragement to

step out and I did.

NG: Did you have a lot of friends your own age all this time or were you

pretty much bound to the grindstone to support the family?

JHE: No, I didn’t have to support the family in that period of break.

NG: Your father continued to send…

JHE: No. No. He was gone. And so my mother maintained the home, but it

meant those were tough years back in the late thirties…

NG: Did she work?


JHE: She was a schoolteacher.

NG: Oh, yes.

JHE: She taught school at Coleman Elementary School in Chicago for thirty-

five years.

NG: Bless her heart.

JHE: So she held us together. She kept us together. But there were no

benefits on the end. No fringe benefits.

NG: Did your dad flee from his job or just---

JHE: ---No he just left the house.

NG: He just left the house and continued to work in---

JHE: ---continued to… as… Got married again, some years later, sort of

disappeared. Wandered away, you know… it was something that had to

occur. I won’t go into all of the intimacies of that unfortunate situation. It

wasn’t till years later that I understood what had happened.

But we had to work. All three boys had to get little jobs, just to have

some change in our pocket. And maybe get some of the extra things that

we had, because mother had to take care of the rent, food, have some

kind of a piece of a car to get around in. But those were interesting years

NG: Yale must have been kind of a new world, huh?

JHE: Absolutely!


NG: [Laughs]

JHE: Unbelievable! When I arrived at 409 Prospect Street and moved into

one of those four dormitories on that quadrangle, I couldn’t believe… it

was like arriving in heaven. I just, I couldn’t believe that I was there. And

the early years of course were tough, were ha-a-rd, because my education

was faulty. I had to work hard… very, very hard.

But I look back and my grades from college through seminary go on a

kind of a pyramid. I have to admit, they were just ordinary. I just made it.

How Yale ever accepted me, I will never know. Well maybe it’s because of

who I was and they needed some minority students. There were very few

who were there when I was there. It was almost an all white student body.

[Coughs]

But I worked awfully hard; I had to, to stay there. And my third year, I

am pleased to say,… anybody can go back look at the record… they were

all A’s and B’s. When you think I was studying with Roland Bainton

[Roland Herbert Bainton, o 1927, educational work (1965 Yrbk)] and

Richard Niebuhr, and John Schroeder and Halford Luccock, and Luther

Weigle. I stayed away from Robert Calhoun [Robert Lowry Calhoun, o

1921, educational work(1965 Yrbk)] and Christian doctrine. I was afraid of

him.

NG: They were giants in the seminaries in those days.

JHE: Oh-h. They were giants.

NG: Yep.

JHE: Yeah. It was one of the great experiences of my life to have been able

to be there those for three years. It was a marvelous experience, met a lot

of wonderful people, many of whom I still know. Liston Pope, [Liston Pope


o 1935(1965 Yrbk)] in a sense, became my mentor when he was there. I

did most of my major work with him in Social Ethics. [Coughs]

NG: It was a tragedy how he--- ---wound up wasn’t it?

JHE: ---Terrible—

NG: He was--- ---so promising.

JHE: --- Almost broke my heart.—

NG: Yeah.

JHE: Yeah. I knew a number of people who knew him well. He got caught in

a world that evidently he was not able to handle. It was sad.

NG: I remember when he--- ---he took that rest… sabbatical.

JHE: ---he was a great person---

NG: He… I was in Connecticut at that time and he said, “I’m going to go

down to North Carolina and going go to the little cottage my sister has on

the shore, and--- ---I’m going to sit on the porch for a month and then if I

feel like it I’m going to start to rock.”

JHE: ---[Coughs]---

[Sound of Laughter]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

NG: Well, I interrupted you.


JHE: That’s all right

NG: You went there as a Presbyterian, did you, Joe?

JHE: No-No-No. I went there as a Congregational Student--- ---you see.

NG: ---Did you.--- I see.

JHE: Because--- ---Church of the Good Shepherd.

NG: ---on account of the Church of the Good Shepherd--- Yeah.

JHE: Because it was a Congregational Church.

NG: Oh, Yeah.

JHE: It only bought a… it bought a church--- ---bought a Presbyterian

Building.

NG: ---Presbyterian Building---

JHE: Because they moved out into the eighties, and then twenty years later

they have to face the problem again. And then refused to move at last. So

they’re there. No, I think they did sell out to some… another congregation,

I’m not sure.

NG: They’re in their third building now?

JHE: They’re in their third building.

NG: Did they--- ---build this one themselves?


JHE: ---Churches--- I think they built it. Yes, because it’s an excellent

building. It’s structurally sound. We lived in the parsonage next door, and

reared our children there, when we went back. Well, that’s running ahead

of the story.

In my third year at the seminary, Luther Weigle [Luther Allan Weigle, o

1903], you remember was dean, and student… I had my first foray into

political life. The student body elects a president and a group of students

came to me and said we don’t like the nominee would you be willing to run

against him? I said yeah, I didn’t know what I was doing. I really didn’t

know what I was doing.

And almost all southern students, southern white boys, who I had

become friends with. Played bridge with. Played basketball with in the

gym… what is now another one of the institutions at Yale Divinity School,

one of the add-ons… in that building there was once a gym. Oh, we had a

wonderful time.

Well, I ran against this other person. And I can’t remember who he

was, but I won and became the President of the student body, my third

year. That meant I had to work very closely with the Dean because there

were little niceties around the edges, like welcoming the freshmen in and

helping to inculcate and indoctrinate them into the life of the seminary, as

a student… as a fellow student. That exposed me to a number of

privileges, which I will never forget. I will always be grateful for.

Graduated in 1942, was the Marshall of my class, in the graduation,

because I was the President. It was agreed that I should be that person

who went up to get the degrees for the seventy odd of us who were in the

graduating class in ’42. And I had had a nervous several months just prior

to… Everybody was getting calls or deciding whether they were going on

to graduate school, or whether they were going out into a pastorate and I

wasn’t getting a thing. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. All

this marvelous education.


JHE: And it was not until late, I’ll say April of ’42, that finally a little mission in

Brooklyn, the St. Luke’s Congregational Church… the church way over on

Rockaway Avenue where on any Sunday night we used to say… any

Saturday night there were open street cars you could say that you could

hear twelve languages spoken on a street car.

It was a small Congregational Church that needed a pastor. And

through… I can’t even remember, I’ve lost the name of who the Executive

was of the Association in New York… it’s been too long ago, I thought I

knew that… got in touch with me and I became the minister of the St.

Luke’s Congregational Church over on Rockaway Avenue with twelve

members. They were all from the island of Barbados. They never

understood me and I didn’t understand them.

NG: [Laughs]

JHE: And again God works in a very strange and wonderful way. I’ve always

believed in the God-directed life. And I was there only a few months when

our Grace Church over in Harlem, which was a stated church of some

several hundred members, lost their minister and they heard about me…

the name of the Executive is almost coming to me but it may come before

I end… called me and said, “Grace Church over on 139th Street, right in

the heart of Harlem is available, would you be interested?” And I said, “Of

course,” I knew I had to get out of that situation. It was debilitating and

demoralizing. And I wasn’t helping that small group… handful of folk.

And so I was called in that fall to the Grace Congregational Church of

Harlem and that’s where ministry really began for me. I was there for four

years. And then I got a call, one day from the minister of the Park Street

Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Dr. Fred Hoskins and wanted to know

if I would be interested in being a candidate to be the Associate General

Secretary of the Connecticut Council of Churches?


JHE: Well I was young. I was newly married. By that time I had met and

married my wife, in 1944, yes, this is in 1946. And it sounded like an

interesting opportunity, so I went up and was interviewed by the

committee and J. Oscar Lee [Junius Oscar Lee, o 1932 (1965 Yrbk)]had

left who had been in that job and gone to the Federal Council of Churches

to be the Secretary for Race Relations. And I was called to be the

Associate General Secretary of the Connecticut Council of Churches.

NG: Wasn’t Fred at the United Church in Bridgeport?

JHE: I thought… I could be wrong… It may be.

NG: I think so.

JHE: But he was in Bridgeport.

NG: Yeah. That’s right.

JHE: He was the President of the Connecticut Council of Churches and

became the Chair of the Search Committee to fill that vacancy. They

wanted to fill it with a minority person, and they heard about me. And I

accepted that call. Glenn Roberts was the General Secretary. So we

moved to Hartford. We bought a house. My first experience in buying a

house, I bought a house without a furnace.

NG: Oh wow. [Chuckles]


JHE: And that was an interesting year. First my portfolio was social action,

youth work, and ministry to the tobacco workers. That exposed me into a

lot of things that I didn’t know anything about, but had a lot of fun learning.

Traveled all over the State of Connecticut up and down, back and forth.

Supposed to be an expert in youth work and what not, speaking in our

churches. Spoke to more rallies than I ever knew about and was there for

a year and the Council ran out of money. You know about that story.

Suddenly I was confronted with the fact that they didn’t know how they

were going to pay me. Again, that very moment, Mt. Zion Church in

Cleveland became available. And I received a call; from I think it was

Erston Butterfield, who said Mt. Zion Church is open, would you be

interested? And of course I said, “Yes, I would be interested!”

NG: What year was this?

JHE: This is 1947.

NG: What would Erston have been doing then? Was he Association

Minister?

JHE: I think he was Association.

NG: That’s when Everett Babcock was the Conference Minister.

JHE: No, it was Everett Babcock excuse me, because Erston came along

later. No it was Everett Babcock, because that’s when I met Everett and

Hannah.


NG: Because Everett was an old Connecticut--- ---Council of Churches

man.

JHE: ---That’s--- That’s right. He had left, was succeeded by Glenn Roberts.

He kind of still knew what was going on back in Connecticut and heard

about J. Oscar Lee’s leaving and my coming to Connecticut, and so...

Yes, excuse me. I’m so glad you asked that question. Your memory is

better than mine about Connecticut, because you were closer to so many

things. It was Everett Babcock. I forgot. He got in touch with me and again

I… We did it different in those days. [Chuckles]

NG: [Chuckles]

JHE: I went out and preached on a Sunday Morning at Mt. Zion, at 9014

Cedar Avenue. I’ll never forget it, in an old monstrosity of building that

never intended to be a church. And they had made into a… for church

use. They held a church meeting right after the morning service and voted

to call me, on the spot. And of course, I said yes.

NG: I got called a couple of times--- ---like that.

JHE: ---Like that.---

[Laughter]

We don’t do it that way--- ---now.

NG: No. No.


JHE: But you were called on the basis of your preaching, and your

personality and need and what not. Well I, we moved to, my wife and I…

and by that time we had two little girls. Leslie was born in New York where

we… we lived in the Bronx. And Harriette was born in Washington, DC,

because Harriette had to go home to Washington, DC to live until I could

find a place for us to live in Hartford, Connecticut. And so with my little

family, we moved… they found a---

NG: ---This’d be a good time to say a little bit about Harriette, I--- ---think.

JHE: ---All right.--- Good.

NG: You’ve got an unusual wife.

JHE: Well, she’s a very charming person and---

NG: ---Yes she is.---

JHE: ---I’ve been very blessed and very grateful all my life. We met in New

York, she was a resident at the YWCA which is just a few blocks from the

church that I was pastoring and a friend brought her to church, whom I

had known… who had known me… we had known each other in Chicago.

This other person was either working or studying, I can’t remember.

But Harriette was a student at the Chester School of Ballet down on 57th

Street, and had planned to be a ballerina, and was studying. She had

been a physical education major at University of Wisconsin and had left

Wisconsin and gone to study in the field of her real love, which was ballet.


JHE: But she met this young preacher. And they dated, which was an

interesting experience. How do young preachers date? But you can do it

in New York City because there’s an anonymity about New York, and we

did, and subsequently married in 1944 at her church in Washington, DC,

the 15th Street Presbyterian Church. And then we went back to live in New

York. And then when we made the move to Connecticut, that was, as I

said, it was tough.

And when she was ready with our second child she had to go home

because there was an uncertain time there. We didn’t know where we

were going to be. She couldn’t be living in a place where she had no

knowledge of physician, and hospitals and what not. So she went home to

be with her mother.

And then we moved to Cleveland. And I was there for six years, in a

wonderful ministry at Mt. Zion Church. Got them out of that old monstrosity

of a building. We worshiped in the YMCA, went through the business of

set up every Sunday on a basketball floor…gymnasium floor. And yet it

was a right move to get them out of there. And subsequently my

successor got them into their present building, which is a very fine… they

built a building, which is commensurate with the character and the abilities

of that middleclass congregation. And it’s a good congregation now about

seven hundred members it’s a solid church. Helped them to understand

their need for outreach, and their benevolence giving.

One night I came home in 1952. And I’d not taken off my hat, and the

telephone rang at about 10:00... And again these high moments in your

life you’ll never forget… And I picked up the phone, and a man by the

name of Samuel Stratton??? was on the other end, and he said, “Mr.

Evans?” I said, yes, “My name is Samuel Stratton???, I am the Chairman

of the Credentials Committee of the Search Committee of the Church of

the Good Shepherd. We have just voted to call you as our Minister.”

NG: [Chuckles]


JHE: I said, “Just a minute. Let me take off my hat and sit down.” You have

to understand this was my home church. I’d been ordained there in 1942.

I’d gone back when I was the minister of Grace Church in Harlem.

When I was called I said, “One proviso, I would like to be ordained in

my own church.” I was not ordained when I was in Brooklyn. I was under

care. I was still under care… no, I was not under care, I was licensed by

the New Haven West Association and was still there. I had not moved

anything because it was uncertain.

So when I was called to Grace I arranged to go back to Good

Shepherd to be ordained and I was ordained on November 16, 1942. And

on this coming November 16, I will have been ordained forty-four years.

So, where am I in my story?

NG: You’re talking with Mr. Stratton???

JHE: Mr. Stratton???, I said, “Let me sit down. What did you say? Would

you repeat it?”

NG: [Laughs]

JHE: “We have called you to be our minister”. I said, “Mr. Stratton???, I think

there are a few things that we ought to talk about before this call is

consummated. I would suggest that I come over to Chicago and meet with

the Committee. I think you ought to see me now as I am and we should

talk about a number of things.”

There was no mention of anything. Living, salary, moving, any of the

things you talk about in a search committee. [Laughs] which are just as we

would now know to be normal procedure…


NG: But search committees now can make that kind of [laughing]--- ---

unwarranted assumption.

JHE: ---Right.--- You see, they knew me. I’d gone back almost every

summer to preach. Arthur Gray [Arthur Douglass Gray, o 1934 (1965

Yrbk)], who had succeeded Harold Kingsley was the minister, had gone

and left to become the first Black President of Talladega College.

And they had a search committee, and I subsequently found out they

had written to people like Stan North [Stanley Underwood North, o 1921

(1965 Yrbk)], who was my dear friend, and Truman Douglass and of

course they wrote wonderful letters for my behalf. Those plus some

others, in addition to their knowing me personally… and as I say, the

system was a little bit different back then.

They’d met and considered a number of people, and I knew all of

them… Later I found out, who all they were that they considered. But they

decided that I was the person that wanted on the basis what they knew

about me.

But that was not right and I had enough experience by that time,

because I’d been approached when Kingsley left before they called Arthur

Gray. I said oh, no. Oh no, I’m not ready for that.

Because by that time Good Shepherd was a parish of two thousand

members, and I knew I was not equipped in experience, and knowledge

and understanding of the ministry. So it was right that I go to Mt. Zion

where I’d serve then for a little over six years. So I had had four years in

New York and a year in Connecticut and six years… a little over six years

at Mt. Zion. So I went out to Chicago and met with the committee and

there was a meeting of minds. They had one idea about a salary and I had

another.

NG: [Laughs]


JHE: And some other things which they had not thought of, but not near the

perquisites that are now included in a package as a minister’s called.

None of those, like health insurance, sabbatical, none of those things were

considered. But to be called back to one’s home church and to live in a

parish where your parents had been and many of one’s classmates and

what not was a terrific challenge and opportunity.

And I went. Again not knowing where I was going. And I think I have to

say in all honesty that it was probably one of the greatest moments in my

ministry, to go back to my home church and to be the pastor. It was hard. I

was challenged at every point and---

NG: ---There were folks who had wiped your nose and---

JHE: ---Right---

NG: [Laughs]

JHE: You know, I was one of the boys. I was a member of the usher board

and Harold Kingsley was a typical herr pastor???. He fired the whole

usher board. He just didn’t like the way we were behaving. Well I was one

of them. And yet he invited me back.

He was a Yale graduate… that was another thing… and encouraged

me to go to Yale, and wrote a beautiful letter for me, and offered me the

pulpit summers when we’d go on vacation. So, almost every August when

I could get… whenever I could get back.

There was a summer in my theological education when I couldn’t

afford to go back to Chicago. I didn’t have plane… the train fare, not plane

fare, the train fare. So I stayed on and worked in New Haven, working in

community center. I never will forget it. A man, young man named Robert

Mildrom???. Did you ever know Bob Mildrom????


NG: Well I knew who he was.

JHE: Well, Bob directed a summer program and I went and worked with him

in one of those centers down in New Haven. Because I had to work,

couldn’t make it otherwise. Seminary was closed.

NG: Did you contact the Dixwell Avenue Church while you were in New

Haven, at all?

JHE: Yes. Soon as I arrived, the Director of Field Work suggested that that

would be the place where I might work. That was another element in my

training. Almost as soon as I arrived at the Dixwell Avenue Church, Dr.

Edward F. Goin, who had been there when I arrived for forty-one years, its

first and only pastor, became ill. And I in a sense became the Pastor of the

church. But I had to deal with a certain individual who you know Nat,

named George Crawford.

NG: Yes. [Chuckles]

JHE: He would not allow me to preach. He wanted ordained first-rate

people. I was a student. I could conduct services. I was superintendent of

the Sunday school. I did youth work. I did all of… I learned by doing. It

was the greatest fieldwork experience that a person could have. I was

literally thrown into the water and told to swim.

NG: Did Mr. Ledbetter come while you were there?

JHE: No he came after.

NG: He was one of the great preachers of our denomination.


JHE: But that was… Again, that exposed me to a good solid church, you

know. Dixwell was a good church, made up of fine people. I still know

some of the folk who were there, who remember me as a student.

NG: Well, I got you off the track, but now you’re at Good Shepherd--- ---in

Chicago.

JHE: ---Now--- at my home church--- ---you know…

NG: Yeah. Yeah.

JHE: …Big organization. And it was great. My first Sunday, March 1, 1953.

Communion. Yoshio Fugiyama had been the interim. I baptized his son.

We received new members. It was Communion Sunday. We were there

for an hour-and-a-half, and people were all over the place. Well it was

overwhelming, you know, to be back home. Somehow I got through that

service. I don’t know how I did it. Great music, you know I never had that

kind of situation. Of course, I knew the church.

NG: Mt Zion has a choir of National reputation.

JHE: Now they do, but then they didn’t. It was small. Well, I began and I

worked hard and was there.

NG: What kind of staff did you have at Good Shepherd?

JHE: Well, in the beginning there was no one, except myself, except the

secretary in the office… young woman, who had been a student, when I

was a student in high school… Knew her… Ruth Franklin, never forget

her, one of the grandest people I’ve ever known, and grateful for her

support.


JHE: But I realized early that a church of this size if ministry was to be

effective at all there had to be another staff person. There was so much

that wasn’t being done. And you just couldn’t do it.

And so I got acquainted with Chicago Theological Seminary, which is

only a mile from the Church and found a young student, green out of the

hills of Kentucky who was interested in coming to the staff and becoming

my associate. And I had to sell the congregation on the concept and the

idea. And we did. And I introduced the Church of the Good Shepherd to

the Rev. Clyde Miller.

NG: For Heavens sake.

JHE: Yes sir. I am responsible for Clyde Miller--- --- being in the United

Church of Christ

NG: ---Oh boy!---

[Sound of Laughter]

JHE: You talk about young and everything else. And rough on the edges.

NG: He never got over being a clown. [Chuckles] See he’s the Minister of

the Colorado Conference now.

JHE: He’s the Conference Minister. But look at his record, you know. He

left there and he’s been... he was an executive of the Church Federation

of Chicago, Associate Director, then Director of Project Equality, Boston

City Missionary Society.

But Clyde wanted to be a Conference Minister and he didn’t make it in

Massachusetts, so he went to the Rocky Mountain Conference and has

had a certain amount of success. I’ve never fully understood it, but…


NG: [Laughs]

JHE: Advised him against it, but nevertheless, again he went. Well, Clyde

was initiated into the church, to then the Congregational Church. I think it

was 1955. So I was called in ’53 and two years later I was able to bring on

a full time associate. And Clyde worked with me, and then we called him.

He was first a student. Excuse me. Then upon graduation we called him

as an Associate. And he was with me for several years, and received

some experience, helped him to develop an excellent youth program,

which was nothing when I was there.

You know, we had a good Sunday school, but Sunday school, youth

work and sharing the parish… the calling. Then we did the calling you

know. And it was a middle-aged congregation. Now it’s an old

congregation.

So then Clyde left. Just before I left the Church of the Good Shepherd

in ’67 we called another student… a graduate student who was getting his

Doctorate in the Divinity School, Randy Evans. Randall Evans. No relation

to me. And Randy came on and was there until his untimely death about

four years ago… three years ago he was found dead.

[Sound of Backup Tape Clicking Off]

NG: That’s [Laughs] good note to end--- ---that side of the record on, isn’t

it?

JHE: ---and just stop it right there.--- Is this kind of stuff you want?

NG: Oh you bet. Yes sir. Wait a minute. Let’s... This is the end of the first

side of the interview. Turn it over and we will go on from here.


[PAUSE IN INTERVIEW 39]

[END OF TAPE 39: SIDE A]

[BEGINNING OF TAPE 39: SIDE B]

[RESUMPTION OF INTERVIEW 39]

NG: This is the beginning of the second side of the interview of Dr. Joseph

H. Evans by Nathaniel Guptill for the Living History Archives of the United

Church of Christ.

Well, you were telling me a little bit about your life at the Church of the

Good Shepherd, which was your major pastorate

JHE: It was my major pastorate.

NG: How many years were you there?

JHE: A few months short of fifteen years. It was my longest Pastorate.

During those years a number of things happened. Of course, the

community was changing. The Park Manor Church came into existence,

where Dean Faulkner, who had been Dean at Fisk University, became the

first pastor.

NG: What a marvelous man.

JHE: To be exposed to him as a fellow coworker. I was a moderator of that

organizing church.

NG: How about that.


JHE: Yes, and helped to get them organized, and to choose their name, and

to select their new pastor. That was one of my privileges. And then to

have had Trinity Church come into being after that, which was way south

on 95th Street, and today under the leadership of Jeremiah Wright is the

fastest growing church and the largest church in the United Church of

Christ, with a membership now of over 3,600.

NG: For heaven’s sake.

JHE: And their budget listed in the current yearbook is a $1,300,000 dollars.

NG: Isn’t that wonderful?

JHE: This is our leading church in the United Church of Christ, which

happens to be black. Well, those two churches took people away from the

Church of the Good Shepherd. In my second year, I recommended to the

Board of Deacons, and they almost had apoplexy, that we remove 529

names from the roll. It was my honest professional judgment on the basis

of careful study… those people just weren’t there. They were names on

the rolls and that two thousand membership sounded awfully good, but

was untrue.

Well, the congregation voted. They accepted my recommendation, so

the membership dropped to fifteen hundred. And then wavered between

fifteen hundred and twelve hundred, because of these new churches that

were being organized, and that folk moved farther and farther south. It is

understandable that they would want to go to churches that were near.

Then there was the attraction of Bill Faulkner, you know. That was hard

competition. So we lost---


NG: ---I’ll never forget. I attended a meeting someplace… somewhere, I

can’t even remember where it was, but I’ll never forget it… which the

entertainment… I think it was up to Geneva Point, New Hampshire… the

major entertainment after the meeting in the evening was Mr. Faulkner

telling--- ---telling Uncle Remus stories

JHE: ---telling his stories--- Yeah, his folk stories. Just fantastic. Yes.

NG: [Laughs]

JHE: You know he’s still living?

NG: Is he? I’m glad.

JHE: Not well, but in his nineties down at Wildwood, New Jersey. One of the

last of the Patriarchs… One of the real patriarchs of the church.

NG: I remember his telling us that all four races of mankind had blood in his

veins.

JHE: Yeah. Right. That’s right

NG: [Laughs]

JHE: Well, that’s true in probably most of us.

NG: Yeah, [Chuckles] I suppose so.

JHE: Yeah. Well---


NG: ---So, now you can… all of this time, the United Church of Christ was

coming into being. We went through all the squabbles and stuff like that.

Did this touch you in any real way as you were going through your

ministry?

JHE: Yes. You see.

NG: Chicago was a hot bed of anti-union.

JHE: O-h-h-h! What was his name, who was with the Congregational Union,

who was an anti-merger person? I was a member of that Board, back in

1952. Mary Feiberger was an officer.

NG: Hanson?

JHE: Hanson… Neil Hanson. That’s the name I was trying to think of earlier.

Had been… was instrumental in my get… in bringing my name to the

attention of the church, now, took another position because I was pro-

merger.

I had been privileged… When I was the Pastor of the Grace Church in

New York City… and I have one of the old records, one of the books that

was published by the Board for Homeland Ministries… I was a member of

that Board, back in 1952. Mary Feiberger was an officer.

NG: [Laughs]

JHE: I was an officer. What was his name, I’m trying to think who was the

President of the Board. Bill--- ---Bill McCormick.

NG: ---McCormick?---


JHE: Yeah, President. I was Vice President, young neophyte of a local

Pastor, but he needed an image there on that board and I was it. Well I

served for a number of years on that Board and when I went off, I became

a member of the Board of the Council for Social Action when Ray Gibbons

was the executive. It was then that I became very close to Ray and

Marjorie and knew them quite well.

And served… I was on the nominating committee of the old General

Council. I was the last chaplain of the old General Council of the

Congregation Christian Churches that met in old Mechanics Hall in

Boston. You remember that?

NG: That was the year I was elected Associate Minister and Secretary of

General Council. [Laughs]

JHE: So our lives have crossed--- ---again, and again---

NG: ---That’s right.--- Several times.

JHE: Several times. And so I had the privilege and the joy of serving a

number of places. Well, all during those years when I was the Pastor of

the Church of the Good Shepherd there was the task of interpreting the

Union that was to occur. And we took two votes on it in our church. The

first one, there were a number of people in our church - you have to

understand why this would be of concern to a black congregation - who

wanted to know what was going to happen to our colleges? Because they

were graduates of Fisk, Tougaloo, Tilston,---

NG: ---Talladega.---


JHE: ---and Talladega, and Lemoyne, where I later became a board

member. And they kept asking questions that I couldn’t answer. So I said,

“I will get you the answer.” And we put off the final vote on whether we

would be a member congregation as was required, for a number of

months. And then we had a specially called church meeting, and I

reported.

: And I’ll never forget the vote. Certain votes I won’t ever forget. We

voted three hundred and fifty-five to nothing to join the United Church,

which I felt good about. So… went into that.

I was in Cleveland in 1957 and marched in the procession, as a

delegate. When we marched down Superior Avenue and the delegates

from the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational

Christian churches met and we went into the Music Hall and we sat down

and I was part of that experience. So I was there as a delegate, saw it and

was privileged to be there.

NG: So then--- ---came

JHE: ---Then---

NG: this, this marvelous, marvelous thing that---

JHE: ---I don’t know how marvelous it was---

NG: ----you know I could see… I could see this budding at Yale Divinity

School. There’s some folks didn’t like the nominee of the nominating

committee so they asked you to run for President. Well that’s just what

happened [Laughs] at the United… was Secretary of the United Church of

Christ.


JHE: Yes, Fred Buschmeyer… the first Secretary, whom I had known in

Washington, DC when he was an executive, and then as a secretary of

the Church when the United Church came into being and was elected first

Secretary… came near retirement and decided before he fully retired that

he would like to go back into the pastorate. And of all places he went to

Sidney, Australia. And he left before his term was over.

But the nominating committee… no the Executive Council decided that

the secretary… that the office should be filled by the General Synod.

Therefore they ran it through the nominating committee process. Well, the

nominating committee decided, and there are some interesting stories

behind that, that they would nominate Robert F. R. Peters. Good friend of

mine, who had been a pastor in Sandusky in Ohio.

NG: Poor old Bob was kind of a victim in this--- ---in this situation.

JHE: ---He got caught--- He got caught.

NG: No bitterness though.

JHE: No. He came out of it. Mary had the hardest time. Mary could hardly

look at me.

Anyhow, I allowed my name to be put up with no belief or any idea that

I would win. I was a delegate, as I had been many times. I’d been to every

General Synod, been to every national meeting of the Church since 1946,

and the predecessor of the Congregational Christian churches’ General

Council. I just always felt that that was a part of the thing that I should do

as part of my ministry. I’ve always advised it…

NG: Now was this, was this ’67?

JHE: ‘67


NG: That’s what I thought. In Cincinnati.

JHE: In Cincinnati.

NG: I made a speech to the [Laughs] General Synod that year, Swingers

and--- --- ???

JHE: ---Swingers and--- Yeah, I remember.

NG: [Laughs]

JHE: I have a copy of it somewhere, Nat. And so, I was encouraged to have

my name put up to be nominated from the floor. And I was nominated.

You remember Hollis Price was the moderator. We were always confused,

folks would come up to me and say, “Hollis how are you?” I would say,

“Fine.”

NG: [Laughs]

JHE: I just let them go on and make their interesting mistake. And they

would go up to him and say, “Joe, how are you?” So when I was called up

by Hollis, we stood there next to each other, the Synod just broke out in a

roar, because I guess we were similar in color, and size, and make up.

He was a little more earthy, I think, than I am, because he was a

Southerner and sounded like it. They called Bob Peters up---

NG: ---He was a college President.---


JHE: He was the President of Lemoyne. Lemoyne College. It’s now

Lemoyne-Owen because they merged later with a small Baptist group…

Tennessee Baptist group. But Hollis was the President of that college and

did well, but was the Moderator of the church at that year and had to

preside over that election.

And one of my members of Good Shepherd was a delegate, Ollie

Diggs. And she got up on the floor and she said, “I don’t know what to do.

He’s my Pastor, and yet I want to support him for this [laugh] election.” It

was a interesting moment. Well, again I won, 402 to 292. As I said, things

like that you don’t ever forget.

And it was hard because both I had to go back to New York three

months later. The constitution provides that the officers of the church must

take office ninety days after election. Since we were meeting the last of

June, almost the first of July that means you take the office… you must be

in the position on October first. So there was the task of going back to not

only face, but work with Bob Peters and--- he was the most…

NG: ---Bob was the Assistant to the President wasn’t he?

JHE: He was the first assistant called by Ben Herbster, the first President of

the Church, to be his Associate in that office. And Bob was most gracious,

and we became close friends. And later on in years he said it was the best

thing that ever happened. He couldn’t have done what I did, not that I did

that much but the requirements of the job.

As I say, it was hard for Mary. You see, Mary had… his wife; Mary

Peters at the time of General Synod had taken on what was developed as

a kind of three-month job of working with delegates, recording them.

Keeping track of them is a big job because as you know, as a former

Conference Minister, delegates change by twenty-five percent by the time

of General Synod, but she managed all of that. [Breathes deeply]


JHE: Question was: was I going to use her? Well, I had no inclination of

doing otherwise, you know. I just couldn’t do that.

So she got over the pain. And she felt great pain. I remember, passing

her in the hall at the hotel where we were staying, and she couldn’t even…

the Netherlands Hilton Hotel in Cincinnati… She couldn’t even look at me.

NG: Well, it was a time of tremendous upheaval. It was a time when… The

United Church of Christ has always been proud of the fact that it has tried

to be in the vanguard in improving race relations. Now both the

conservatives and the liberals obviously made a whole lot of mistakes

doing that and sometimes things get to be fads and good things are

accomplished by evil means and all sorts of things happen. But there was

a whole lot of… a lot of turmoil there.

I remember… As a matter of fact, while I have always been an admirer

of yours and I was pretty sure you were going to get elected, I had to

scurry around… The nominating committee wouldn’t even come up and

nominate Bob Peters, because they were afraid that they would be

regarded by some as being anti-black, if they [chuckles] came to the

support of their own candidate.

JHE: Well, I was in a very difficult position.

NG: And I had to go… of course you were. And I had to go and recruit Fred

Meek, who whatever anybody else might say about him… wasn’t scared

of anybody.

JHE: No.

NG: [Laughs] And he made the speech nominating Bob, I recall.


JHE: Well you see, I had known Fred, and he could stand in that without any

qualms.---

NG: Oh, sure.

JHE: You know, because he was a member of the Committee on Permanent

Headquarters

NG: Yeah. Yeah.

JHE: Now that was another introduction to the national and life of the

church. I had marvelous exposure there when the Third Committee was

appointed of members of the church, of the larger church, and I was

elected Chair. And Fred Meek was a member of that Permanent

Headquarters Committee, along with Marita Collumberg (??), and Paul

Haas, and Kurt Schmiechen and people of that ilk. It was one of the finest

committees I’d ever been on, or been a part of. But it had and almost

impossible task

NG: Oh it had an absolutely impossible job.

NG: I can remember that they canvassed the heads of the various

instrumentalities of the United Church of Christ to find out where they

thought the headquarters ought to be. I remember, I was I was at that time

the Director of the Department of Church Ministry and I was the only one

of all of them that recommended a place that he wasn’t then occupying. I

thought we should have gone to the Interchurch Center [475 Riverside,

NYC, NY], which I think perhaps we’re going to do maybe, but that’s

getting ahead of it.

NG: Go ahead and talk about moving in as Secretary.


JHE: Well, that summer shortly after my election, and suddenly I had done it.

And when Fred announced the vote… that I had won of course there was

applause and all of that. And all I could think, “My God, what have I

done?”

NG: [Laughs]

JHE: Because I hadn’t gone to Cincinnati planning to be in any way shape or

form to be the Secretary, so in… [snaps finger] in a moment my life

changed just like that. [snaps finger]

My wife, Harriette was not there. I had flown back to Chicago because

Harriette had for a number of years directed a cotillion for the presenting

of young women to the Chicago society. South Side black society.

And she had directed that on behalf of a woman’s organization called

the Links. It’s a national woman’s orga… black woman’s organization. And

one of our daughters was being presented. Well I was the father that had

to present his daughter.

So I flew back. I told her I was going to be nominated, but I said I don’t

think you have to worry, because you don’t beat the nominating

committee. You just don’t do that, you know. But I allowed my name and I

said if I get a few votes, at least we’ve made a witness, you know and

we’ve been heard. That was the point of it all. But Praise God, I was

elected.

NG: You made a good speech, Joe.

JHE: Well, I--- ---don’t know what I said.

NG: ---I Remember it well.---


JHE: I don’t remember what I said. Never will. So I went back to Chicago,

patronage was filled next door to the church. The members of the church

had come to toast us, to congratulate. But then they realized that I would

have to leave. Then it became heartbreaking, almost tragic, because… I

was very secure, well planned. I was enjoying my ministry had no plans…

Where was I going to go? I was on the top of the heap, you know.

Leading church in the denomination. Park Manor was just coming into

being, just coming. Trinity was not even thought of then… yet. There was

no other church unless it had been Plymouth, Washington, DC, or

Peoples. But I had it. I was where I wanted…

I was in Chicago, my home, where I loved to be. I loved Chicago. It’s

my town in spite of our mayors who had been there and what not. But, it

was a tough town. Chicago has always been a tough town, politically. Wild

town, but it’s great. It’s a vibrant city. I like it.

So, we didn’t know what we were going to do. Again we received a

call, some people that we had met one summer. In 1950, we began

vacationing on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. My wife’s mother bought a

house in an auction, then bought another one on an auction. And she

died, and we had picked up the mortgage on that… my wife Harriette had

twin brother, Harold, who lived in Washington… he took one house. We

took the other.

And this poor preacher was able to eek out enough money to, through

the pressure and the determination of my little wife, we were going to hang

onto that piece of property and we did. And so this last summer we spent

our thirty-sixth year in vacationing on the island of Martha’s Vineyard in

the town of Oak Bluffs. And now that house and that land, it takes me two

days to cut the lawn, is very valuable.

NG: Oh, I’m sure it is.


JHE: It’s gone off the wall. We have it and we enjoy it and love it. Well, why

did I start this? Why did I lead into this?

NG: You’re talking about breaking loose from Good Shepherd and going to

New York.

JHE: Oh. Oh, yes. One summer, I’m not sure when it was, in 1960 I had

been fortunate enough to be a part of a world tour that Ray Gibbons and

Marjorie had led. And went around the world. It was the longest tour that

had ever been developed. It was too long. We were out seventy days. Too

long, you don’t go that long. You never go that long. Forty is the longest

you should go. A month is better. It’s just too long to be away from

everything. But that’s another story.

But, we had let a couple, a physician and his wife, Dr. and Mrs. Joseph

Dixon. Have never seen them since. Let them have the house, on faith.

You take it. If you want to give us something, all right. They needed a

place and we wanted it occupied. Mrs. Dixon called us and said, there’s a

house available you’d better come. I think you’d like it.

Again, I flew to New York, went out to St Albans, Queens. Never been

there in life. Met a man, the owner was a man named Bailer. Had a large

family and six children, he had just… he was labor arbitrator, black man,

but he was light like I am… was a labor arbitrator, doing well, but had

suddenly decided to pick up and move to California. And that home

became available, a six room house. Well I’d never owned a house before

in my life; I had been a poor preacher living in parsonages you know.

NG: Except in Connecticut

JHE: Except in Connecticut--- ---which was a fiasco.

NG: ---with no furnace---


JHE: On Capon Street, in Hartford, Connecticut… 317, things like that you

don’t forget. We negotiated, he didn’t want a lawyer, and my lawyer was

the lawyer of the church, John Redman, and we closed the deal. And I

bought it at what was now a ridiculous price. Again, God was with me.

Beautiful community, St. Albans is a very lovely community of single-

family homes, in Queens, but it was an hour subway ride from 297 Park

Avenue South. But we moved there. By that time my middle daughter was

married and gone. No-no-no. My oldest daughter was in graduate school,

so I had two children still there, because we moved in ’67 my middle

daughter was married in ’69 and then she left and just my youngest was

there, but she was gone because she was in collage.

So, for most of the time Harriette and I were alone there but in a very

nice, just a nice three bedroom six-room home which we enjoyed very

much. That’s where we lived… we moved there. But then learning to

commute everyday… I had a minimum of a two-hour subway ride back

and forth.

And sixteen years was long enough to do that. I, it was hard and I think

we do not understand the payment that our national staff people make, in

living in Mount Claire, New Jersey and Dick Duby??? lives way up in the

corner. He spends four hours a day on the train.

NG: We lived in Ft. Washington when we were there.

JHE: There you are, Ft. Washington. Charles Lockyear, the Treasurer of the

Church lives in Pleasantville, which is north of Chappaqua, which is near

Mt. Kisko. And he’s on the train, depending on what the weather is like…

terrible trains. I decided I needed to live in a black community… Living in a

white world… I always lived in two worlds.


JHE: But just for the sake of our own sense of identity, because we joined

the St. Albans Church where Robert Johnson is the minister… Never got

there, because as I became known I was out so much of the time away on

Sundays speaking at all kinds matters.

When I went to be the secretary of the church, my primary

responsibilities were the Yearbook and keeping the record of ministers in

full standing, and the Constitution and By-laws. Kind of being a watchdog

of that sort of thing. But there was no vice-president of the church and we

have no vice-president of the church and we have no vice-president today.

And the President always has more invitations to speak then he could

ever possibly handle. When Avery Post was elected fourth President of

the Church he had several hundred invitations on his desk and could not

except a third of them.

And as I became known and as people knew me and recognized me, I

began getting invitations, so I traveled all over. I’ve been in almost every

conference. One or two that I think I can name, I’ve not… but I think I’ve

attended all. So my first year, I attended eight conference annual

meetings. It was crazy. Absolutely, insane. Yet it was wonderful exposure

to the church and to meeting the folk.

And then another radical change occurred after the 1973 General

Synod. We had… Let me back up, when I went to the office there were

three people, Bob Peters, Jack Yates, who was then the second staff

person on the staff of the President, and the Secretary of the church,

myself, were involved in managing and establishing the General Synod

Program and Procedures. The work was divided. Well Bob Peters retired.

That left Jack Yates and myself.


JHE: Well some things happened in 1973 in St. Louis that were not good, if I

may be just kind enough to say so. Things fell through the cracks, and

after that Robert Moss, who is now the second President of the church

came to me and said “Joe, I would like to create an office in our office

called the Administrator of the General Synod, I want you to take it.

I didn’t know anything about [laughs] what it meant to be the

Administrator of the Synod. But I’ve always taken on jobs I didn’t know

what they were. You learn by doing, in-service training. But it meant,

learning how to work with hotels, convention centers, service

organizations, general synod delegates, conferences and establishing all

of that ‘schmere’, as Frank Pirazzini says, in setting up a General Synod.

And I did it from 1975 on through ’83.

So, ’75, ’77, and you can’t ever forget ’77, that was the year when I

was the President of the church. Bob Moss had died. In 1976 and that

year prior, which was one of the most painful years in my life and in the life

of the church. Many people don’t know about it.

When Bob Moss became ill and we lived with that. We knew it, and I’d

go over to visit him. And there were those weeks and then months when,

who should visit him? What should we say about his condition? But as

jaundice became evident it was obvious that he was an ill man… and to

live with knowledge that he was becoming more ill with each passing week

was a very difficult thing, but to carry on the office.

In one sense I suppose I was the acting President for many months

before he died, actually died. Then I became the President pro tempore,

as provided by the standing rules of the Executive Council and then at the

Lord Baltimore Hotel at that meeting, which occurred immediately

following his death and burial at the Union Church in Mount Clair, New

Jersey, we all drove down to Baltimore, because the meeting had been

set up at the Lord Baltimore Hotel.


NG: This is the Executive Council.

JHE: The Executive Council, which is one of three hardest meetings I have

ever been through, to go through that meeting. The Council to decide on

its procedures, and to sit through and to establish all of those procedures

and then they arrived at the point of names, and mine became one of

about twenty, then I had to retire from the committee, and to leave. And

then to sit out in the lobby of the Lord Baltimore Hotel for hours, literally

hours, and to await that decision.

And when the Executive Council adjourned and Helen Barnhill, who

was then Chair, came through the door grinning, I said, “Oh Lord, it’s me.”

Again, what have I done? And I was elected President of the church.

NG: It was inevitable--- you were in the right place at the right time.

JHE: For that year, well yes… It was a great year, a hard year again, but you

know, you do the hard things when they come. It was a time of when the

church needed desperately to have some sense of feeling that there was

a Pastor at the helm. And I tried to be that, because healing was so

necessary. The church was angry, because death always creates anger.

Why did this happen to us?

Bob was a good person, a good man, a good leader, sound in his

thinking and in his feeling and it was growing and was developing and I

have a high regard for him. He was kind enough to call me his Pastor.

That is not commonly known. He did used to come in and say, “I’d like to

talk.” Come in and talk, just share his feelings. And he had some very

opportune and serious moments when he didn’t know what to do. We

talked it through and always when we finished I’d say, “Well now you have

to make the decision. I can only hear and be your sounding board,” and he

did so often he did the right thing in my judgment.


JHE: Well, many people ask why did I not allow myself to run for the

Presidency. In that Executive Council meeting certain agreements had

been negotiated before names had been considered, and one of those

was that whoever was elected President would not be a nominee at the

next General Synod. I can not give you the rationale, today, for that, but I

remember that was an agreed upon principle.

NG: Of course, the Executive Council really did not have any authority to

make, as far as that’s concerned

JHE: Yeah, but nobody challenged that, you see. Hindsight is better than

foresight. It may be that they did not want to predetermine the activity of

the nominating committee. That is one of the justifications that at least I

can come up with. I can not go back and recoup… because that was a

hard meeting, you remember… Those folk… we were struggling, because

the specter of… We’d just left his funeral and to go to that meeting, that

was a hard meeting.

And it was a meeting in which folk really had to struggle, with how to

proceed. What do we do? Council had never faced that before in its life,

first time. It never faced the death of a President. Well, I became the

President and served that year. I really did two jobs. I took a leave of

absence from being Secretary.

NG: Did anybody pick up any of the slack?

JHE: Oh yes. Two people, Richard Griffiths???, who’s on the staff, is now

pastoring in Hartford, Connecticut, and---

NG: ---And Gordon Beale---

JHE: Carol Braun.


NG: Oh, Carol Braun.

JHE: Carol was on the--- ---President’s staff.

NG: ---Because Gordon--- Gordon Beale was around at that time but he

was Assistant to the President

JHE: He was Assistant to the President. We almost adjourned that meeting

without electing him. Suddenly at the last minute someone said, “Oh,

Gordon is in his position by virtue of an action of the Executive Council at

the recommendation of the President of the Church,” who had died.

We suddenly realized he was out there. Well the time was too short. I

didn’t have any time to be searching for him… for an Associate. And I

said, “Well let’s just keep him. I will have to work with him, I must work

with him and I will do my best.”

That was tough, because Gordon was not an easy person. That was a

mistake. That was one of Bob Moss’s few mistakes. He was not right for

that position. But nevertheless, Dick Griffiths??? and Carol picked up

pieces of the Secretary’s job but kept coming to me because they didn’t

know how the job moved and should be. But somehow we carried it off.

That ’77 General Synod was one of the hardest Synod’s I’ve ever been

through. We had poor moderators that year. Again, the specter of Bob

Moss’ death was still there. Avery Post was the nominee. People kept

coming to me. Would I run? Even before the Nominating Committee report

I could tell you the people, Conference Ministers who came to me. “Would

you? We’re ready, if you would just say yes.” I said, “No. I am honor

bound by a principle that I agreed to, and I must keep faith with that

principle.”


JHE: I probably could have won. But I would have made many enemies.

There was a certain manager’s meeting in Florida, I was waited upon by

six Conference ministers, because they weren’t sure about my behavior

and whether I was giving signals of a nominee. That was not a good

meeting and I took some exceptions.

NG: It would have been a strange thing for you to run against Avery Post

because the two of you had pretty much the same constituency in the

church.

JHE: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

NG: People who naturally would gravitate to you would naturally gravitate to

Avery.

JHE: Right, it would have been a very difficult moment. The church didn’t

need that moment and I knew that. I was prepared, and again hindsight is

better than foresight, I can look back and say it was a very right decision. I

kept faith with an agreement that had been made in that Executive Council

meeting and returned to being the Secretary of the Church. I enjoyed it. It

was good. I enjoyed what I was doing. I tried to do the best that I could.

I served four terms, four four-year terms. And when I’d entered that last

term I realized I knew that age-wise and sixteen years of the job and

sixteen years of New York City, was enough. I didn’t know what I was

going to do, but I knew that I had come to the point where I needed to

leave. And again I finished in the ’83 General Synod in Pittsburgh. It was a

good Synod and I went out with some little bit of feeling that I had done my

best.

NG: What do you think about the United Church of Christ now? Think it was

a good thing that we created it out of these---


JHE: ---Yes. I think it was a good thing. I think we are not without our

problems: identity being one, which was, has been, and still is I think one

of our primary problems. Who are we? I don’t think we know yet. It is not

emerged.

That special… I don’t want to say peculiar, unless I go to the King

James’ version of the Bible, which has used peculiar in one sense, and

now in the revised used it in another, and I prefer it in that sense. But we

have not possessed… I know what I want to say. We have possessed the

uniqueness that ought to be ours as a communion within the Protestant

Family. It is yet to be found. It is yet to come. It is yet to emerge.

NG: We join together in the heat of all of the passion for church union and

by the time we finally got all our legal problems out of the way and really

united, the passion for church union sort of--- ---passed…

JHE: ---It cooled off---

NG: …and a whole lot of other things came up as--- ---as top priorities

JHE: ---Yeah, a lot of other things came up.---

NG: Is the United Church of Christ healthy today, you think?

JHE: Well, Nat, you measure health in a number of ways. I think the way the

total mission of the church, measured by the work of all the

instrumentalities and all of the work of the conferences, which is in every

conceivable area of ministry and concern, represents a tremendous

amount of money. So if you measure it by that, yes it is healthy.


JHE: I lived through a period where I saw… I guess 1975 if my memory

serves me well, was one of the lowest years of losses of membership. I

lived to see that level off.

We are not receiving a great many, but you and I now happen to be

now in a conference that has shown a little upswing in membership, in the

Maine Conference. That is also, as you and I both know… is occurring in

Florida and probably its going to occur in some of the other maybe

Sunbelt Conferences. But at least the tremendous losses that once

occurred have leveled off.

Another health of the church is that we are really becoming a pluralistic

denomination ethnically. When you think of the new churches that are

coming in, West Coast, Southwest and even in the inner city.

Fourthly, however, and I now am serving in a church which was once a

old status church with a tremendous building which is no longer useable

for the size congregation that is here. And many of our churches that are

like this, downtown, old inner-city churches. People are no longer here.

Everyone drives to this church with the exception of a few elderly women

who live down the street in a renovated building where they are renting

interesting quarters.

People come to this church, which is symptomatic and illustrative of

what is happening in so many of our downtown churches. They’re coming

from Falmouth, and Yarmouth, and Cape Elizabeth, where we happen to

have temporary living quarters, and Scarborough, and Sackow???.

They’re coming from all over.


JHE: I don’t yet know, it’s one of the things that interest me. I met with a

young adult group last Sunday night. I said why do you young people, who

are in their thirties and forties… They are young in relation to the rest of

this church---why do you come? They like the openness of the church.

They like the worship. They like the preaching, you have to be able to

preach to be in this pulpit. They like the warmth of the fellowship, and the

possibility of expressing themselves. These five things say something

about this church.

NG: It also says something about the flavor of the United Church of Christ.

JHE: It does. It does.

NG: Before we get through, Fred

JHE: Joe.

NG: [Laughs]

JHE: Not Fred. He’s gone.

NG: The reason I said Fred is because I thought… I’d just like to… Well,

we’ve probably got another five minutes---to pass in review a few of the

names of folks whom you’ve worked with, who really have made an

impact on our church. Say a sentence or two about them. How about Fred

Hoskins?


JHE: Well, they don’t make them like that anymore. Fred was a pulpiteer. He

was a theologian, but he was also a church statesman. He and Jim

Wagner were right for this church in the beginning. They had the esprit de

corps. They had the knowledge. They had the political savvy. And yet they

did it with grace.

[Sound of a Back-up Tape Recording Clicking Off]

NG: There we go.

JHE: Ended on grace.

NG: While the other one is still going a little bit. How about Truman

Douglass?

JHE: Oh Gosh.

NG: Salty’s the word.

JHE: He was salty. He had an abrasive quality.

[Volume of the recording drops suddenly]

JHE: But I knew him years ago, I heard him first I guess when I was in

Chicago, he came…

[CONCLUSION OF INTERVIEW 39]

[END OF TAPE 39: SIDE B]

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