I am applying for a Lilly Foundation grant to continue my research for a book on the Methodist Church and race. My work studies the period between 1939 and 1973 when the Methodist Episcopal Church attempted to create a racially inclusive church. Not a denominational history, my work is a social historical investigation of the church as it struggled to serve very diverse constituencies. In 1939, the Methodist Episcopal Church reunited with its white Southern Methodist counterpart, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and agreed to segregate its Black membership of 350,000 in a separate entity, the Central Jurisdiction (CJ).

My work follows the crisis that unfolded. In the Methodist Archives in Madison, NJ, I have followed official church records, CJ history, and read private papers to understand official church policy. I am especially interested in how church mandates were received in the jurisdictions, notably the Southeastern Jurisdiction, which was reluctant to accept integration; the Northeastern, which strongly supported it; and the Central Jurisdiction, which offered mixed messages. To bring these diverse groups into the tent, the church had to deal respectfully with Southern Methodist segregationists, and to understand the reservations of CJ leaders about the desirability of integration when for them it meant reduced opportunities. The struggle over conference merger, predictably intense in the Deep South, was fierce in Mississippi, home to the last four conferences finally to merge in 1973. I have followed the controversy there, and the interaction between Methodists in the Magnolia State and the national offices. My work follows the complicated struggle of this 10-million member church to create diversity while maintaining its moral message, a struggle that continues throughout our society today.