The color line crossed

Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 9:58 pm

Davie Street Presbyterian looks back on a turbulent time after the historic black church hired a white pastor

Members of Davie Street Presbyterian Church were accustomed to the injustices that came with being black in North Carolina in the 1960s — school segregation, political disenfranchisement, separate lunch counters.

But they were caught off guard when a four-foot-tall cross wrapped in burlap and doused with gasoline was set on fire on the front yard of the parsonage.

The church’s offense? The mostly black downtown Raleigh congregation had just hired a white pastor.

The Rev. Frank Hutchison and his family had moved into the parsonage on South East Street in January 1965. One month later, they awoke to find their house — and their whole neighborhood — aglow from the burning cross outside. Although no one was hurt and the fire was soon extinguished, members of the church were horrified.

“We knew there was some restlessness,” said Lethia Young Daniels, a church member, now 87. “But we didn’t know it was to that extent.”

Last weekend, during the church’s 139th anniversary celebration, members reflected on those four turbulent years, from 1964 to 1968, when Hutchison served the church. The Presbyterian pastor, now retired and living in Florida, was the guest of honor.

Cross-burnings were typical across the South during the civil rights era, and especially in rural areas as white supremacists tried to intimidate African-Americans. They were less common in Raleigh. Still, as the struggle for equality swept through various sectors of society it affected the churches, too.

Some blacks tested the waters by trying to attend white churches. They were often rebuffed at the door by ushers who asked them to leave. Most white churches remained mum on the subject of integration, hoping to tamp down a potentially explosive issue.

“The most typical response of the white church was passive,” said Collins Kilburn, a retired minister and a former leader of the North Carolina Council of Churches. “They didn’t offer any aggressive leadership.”

A good fit

Davie Street Presbyterian was not seeking the limelight when it called a white man as its pastor. Hutchison, who spent a year in Detroit training to serve in interracial settings, applied for the opening, and the church accepted him.

“We felt very comfortable with Frank, and as a matter of fact, he felt very comfortable with us,” recalled Harry Payne, a longtime member of the church.

The church had always had good relations with whites. It was a group of Northern white missionaries who came down to Raleigh after the Civil War that helped get the church started. Davie Street is part of the mostly white Presbyterian Church USA. The local New Hope Presbytery, stretching across Eastern North Carolina, includes 130 churches, of which 13 are mostly black.

But the church was not quite prepared to serve on the vanguard of the civil rights battle.

After the cross-burning, the men of the church got together to develop a strategy. They tapped Payne, who served in the U.S. Army Special Forces, to figure out how to prevent future cross-burnings.

“All we were trying to do was make sure the minister and his wife were safe,” said Payne.

Their first task turned out to be persuading the Hutchisons to stay. It didn’t take long.

“That they would open themselves up to the trouble of having a white minister impressed me,” said Hutchison. “The commitment of the people was outstanding.”

As misfortunes often do, the cross-burning led to closer ties between the church and its pastor. Church women stayed with Hutchison’s wife and daughters until 9:30 every night, and friendships were quickly formed.