Bringing a Revival to the Mountains

This chapter examines Weatherford’s close attention to the concerns of Appalachian poverty, education, and religion. His involvement in these issues grew out of his work with Berea College in Kentucky. Since the late 1910s he had been a member of its Board of Trustees, but upon retirement from Fisk in 1946, he turned his full effort toward Berea, sponsoring a play (Wilderness Road by the famed southern liberal playwright) to highlight the school’s history) as well as setting up accompanying conferences to “improve” mountain religious institutions. These programs also led him to guide a new survey of Appalachia in 1962 and to be a part of the War on Poverty movement at that time. Just as Weatherford’s belief that all persons were sacred had led him to a concern for blacks in the early 1900s, this same philosophy drove him to take up the plight of Appalachian residents. Still, his efforts, like those made for blacks during most of his life, stopped short of calling for major structural changes in the economic system of capitalism.

Conclusion

W. D. Weatherford’s long life came to an end February 21, 1970, in Berea, Kentucky.1 At the time he was living with his son (who by then had become the president of Berea) and his family. A memorial service was held near the college to honor Weatherford, and his funeral took place at the Methodist Church in Black Mountain, North Carolina. Afterward Weatherford was buried in a special plot alongside his wife Julia McRory (who had died in 1957) at the Blue Ridge Assembly. A massive boulder marks their graves, and the following was inscribed for Weatherford:...

Sowing the Seeds of Southern Liberalism

Chapter 3 examines the most important institution that Weatherford guided in his life, the Blue Ridge Assembly (a YMCA summer conference center in Black Mountain, N.C.) and the efforts he made there to improve race relations. Under Weatherford’s guidance in the 1910s and 1920s, the facility hosted African American speakers (among them George Washington Carver, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Robert Russa Moton) and students. These guests always endured some form of segregation during their stays, but their presence and interaction with whites are notable because such events were extremely rare at the time. Indeed, up until 1930 Blue Ridge was one of the few places in the South where such visits could occur and where the topic of race could be discussed. This chapter looks closely at the context of the South at the time, the limits to the programs at Blue Ridge, and why Weatherford did not push harder against segregation. It also illuminates the influence of this institution on a growing number of white liberals of the next era and how this place sowed the seeds of their activism. Finally, it explores the changing procedures Weatherford and Blue Ridge employed in handling racial issues.

A Liberal but Never an Activist

This chapter examines how Weatherford’s views on race continued to evolve from the mid-1930s until his death in 1970. In this period he worked for ten years as a professor at Fisk University and stayed involved in racial concerns. He also authored two books on race relations: one coedited with the noted African American sociologist Charles Spurgeon Johnson, and another that called for churches to be at the forefront of desegregation. Nevertheless, Weatherford in many ways left the subject of race after 1946, as the pace of change on racial issues moved more quickly than he was comfortable with. His withdrawal from racial efforts was typical of other liberals who had been involved in the issue before the 1950s, who, like him, never became activists in the era’s nonviolent civil disobedience efforts. One important point of this chapter, however, is to note that Weatherford began to shift his views on Jim Crow, finally calling for its end by 1943. This section shows the change over time of his views and how larger events (World War II and the Great Depression) and his own personal experiences (his intimate interactions with black students and professors at Fisk while on the faculty there) moved him along.

A Respectable Religious Message

This chapter provides a history of the YMCA in the South and examines Weatherford’s activities within the southern YMCA, particularly among college students from 1900 through 1920. In this period the YMCA was an important institution in towns and cities across the country and particularly among college students, as it was the key campus ministry organization. Weatherford sought to make an intellectually respectable argument for religion in this era of growing skepticism, and he also came to formally address the concerns of African Americans as a vital part of this mission. Weatherford authored some of the first texts in the South about the conditions of blacks and also supported the creation of YMCA study groups to consider these concerns. Race relations at this point for Weatherford remained primarily about making whites aware of these issues. He did not encourage this group to call for political changes.

Introduction

In 1894 an eighteen-year-old white Texan traveled to a national YMCA student conference in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.1 There he met an African American student, roughly ten years his senior, from the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.2 It is very likely this interaction was the first time the former had ever encountered an African American man of such education and stature. In fact, a meeting like this one in the South in this period, and for the coming decades, would have been very unusual considering how segregated that world was. This event was indeed such a striking moment for the younger man that over forty years later he still remembered it. To an acquaintance in the late 1930s he recalled the following about that conference and this man: “I remember that he was rather popular, that he was the only Negro on the grounds and that those of us from the South at the time thought it a little queer that there should be a Negro delegate present.”...

Professionalizing the Southern YMCA

This chapter focuses on Weatherford’s creation, administration, and program for the YMCA Graduate School. This institution began in 1919, operated out of Nashville and had ties to Vanderbilt University, Fisk University, and Scarritt College. It sought to train YMCA secretaries for work on college campuses and in other realms of the YMCA. An important component of its curriculum was its race relations courses, which included interactions with African American professors and students, primarily from Fisk, but also those at Tuskegee Institute. Weatherford’s school turned out approximately one hundred graduates in these years, many of them liberals in the cause of race and religion. In the midst of the Great Depression this institution closed, and the financial constraints that plagued the school represented one of the major limits under which Weatherford worked to carry on his liberal efforts while also garnering needed funds.

The Making of a Southern Liberal

Chapter 1 examines how Weatherford moved from the provincial worldview of a small Texas town to become a southern liberal on matters of race and religion. This was brought on by his move to Nashville, Tenn., his academic studies at Vanderbilt University (undergraduate and graduate), his questioning of religious faith, his urban living, and his interaction with African Americans. Indeed, Weatherford’s movement toward liberalism was heavily influenced by his strong Protestant religious focus, a point he held in common with almost all white southern liberals of this era.