[In 1966, Willie Frye Jr., a Quaker pastor in Goldsboro, North Carolina, had not been active in the civil rights struggles that were convulsing much of the South in those years. But his situation was about to change.]
Willie’s wife Agnes had begun working with the new HeadStart preschool program. As it was federally-funded, HeadStart was integrated, both staff and kids. There she was approached by a Black colleague, who asked if Willie could conduct her wedding.Weddings being a pastor’s specialty, Willie was agreeable. But also cautious: He first offered to do it in their parsonage, informally. But soon the woman reported that RSVPs were piling up, more than would fit in the parsonage; could it be moved to the meetinghouse?
Willie new such events were outside the limits of established Jim Crow segregation. So he took that request to Goldsboro’s business meeting, which approved.Willie presided at the nuptials in the meetinghouse, and they were carried out in what Quakers call “good order.”Well, some Quakers called it good order.
But a small, yet vocal number of Goldsboro Friends — who had not attended the business meeting — were shocked and outraged: how dare Willie conduct a wedding for Negroes in their all-white meeting? What would be next? They demanded that any such events be permanently banned, and for good measure, that Willie be fired. Willie stood his ground and managed to keep his job, but soon left.
In 1968, Winston-Salem Friends became his next post. It was one of the largest and most prestigious of the NCYM churches. (And one wonders if Willie knew, as established by scholars, that Winston-Salem, seven counties and 150 miles west of Goldsboro, was in a less Klan-infested region? Or that after 1965, the Carolina KKK was on the decline?) Regardless, Willie had plenty to do: three growing kids, sermons to preach, weddings, funerals, pastoral visits, and of course Quaker committees.
Besides, there were other kinds of upheaval besides burning crosses and men in white hoods. In those years, many race-related uprisings spread death and destruction in American cities. Winston-Salem had not been entirely spared: in November 1967, a small-scale riot began after a Black man was killed by police. The National Guard was called in to quell the uprising.
Dr. King’s aides point to where the bullet came from that left King dying at their feet in Memphis, April 4, 1968.
The next year was even more turbulent: Dr. King was assassinated in April, 1968; Senator Robert Kennedy shot dead in June. The nationwide wave of urban riots following Dr. King’s death came as near as Charlotte, 75 miles south.
Besides supporting civil rights, both King and Kennedy had become prominent voices in the anti-Vietnam war protests. The day before King was shot, a thousand draft cards were turned in during a Boston antiwar rally. At some other protests, draft cards were burned. These rallies were “peaceful”; but refusing the draft and destroying draft cards were both illegal. (And that November, Quaker Richard Nixon was elected president; it didn’t help. One practical response by some Carolina Quakers was to organize Quaker House in Fayetteville near the vast expanse of Fort Bragg [now Fort Liberty]. That peace witness still continues, 55 years later.)
The reverberations of these struggles soon reached Winston-Salem Friends. Willie had noted that before he began his first pastorate at White Plains, he carefully read North Carolina Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice. Thus he was likely familiar with the clear statements in its pages on race and peace, including:
Racial Relations:“Does your attitude toward people of other races indicate your belief in their right to equal opportunity? Do you believe in the spiritual capacity of men of all races and do you recognize their equality in the sight of God? Are you aware of your responsibility as a Christian to help in the elimination of racial discrimination and prejudice?”
Peace:“We feel bound explicitly to avow our unshaken persuasion that all war is utterly incompatible with the plain precepts of our divine Lord and Lawgiver, and the whole spirit of His Gospel, and that no plea of necessity or policy, however urgent or peculiar, can avail to release either individuals or nations from the paramount allegiance which they owe to Him who hath said, ‘Love your enemies’ . . . .”
Neither of these were modernist innovations. Almost all Friends had heard tales of the Underground Railroad, on which many had made their hazardous way across North Carolina headed to freedom. And the peace witness was even older; the quote above was from an 1887 restatement.
But on both issues, which Willie preached about, he was soon disabused of any lingering naiveté. A Goldsboro wedding didn’t make him a civil rights militant; Willie didn’t sit in or get arrested. But he began preaching the testimonies from NCYM’s Faith & Practice, and sought to nudge the meeting toward aligning with them. On the benches. these messages drew sharply divergent reactions.
As one effort, Willie had given the keynote address at the 1969 NCYM annual session. In it he referred to Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech,” adding that “he had a dream for Friends—a dream that in the 1970s Friends would develop the potential to adopt the total Gospel of Jesus Christ.” By “total gospel” he meant pursuing these social testimonies, as well as the personal evangelism and church growth (which he did not neglect).
A typical array in many NC Friends churches: at left, the U.S. flag; at right the “Christian” flag (with a cross in its folds; Jesus in the middle.
In fact, however, most NCYM members & leaders had long since assimilated to southern Jim Crow culture & the Lost Cause ethos, as well as its militarism. Guilford College was segregated for several more years after Willie enrolled there; it did not begin to desegregate until 1962 (its 125th year).
After Willie’s 1969 yearly meeting keynote, one of his friends remarked that he had sounded “mad.” Willie admitted it:
“I suppose I was mad at a yearly meeting that professed a high standard of Quakerism, and yet most of the meetings were tightly and strictly segregated. [NOTE: Even Guilford College had only desegregated a year earlier.] [The yearly meeting] confessed concern for the poor, yet it did nothing. It professed opposition to war, yet it could not even adopt a good statement on the war in Vietnam. My message had pointed out some of these discrepancies.”
Here, Friends, your humble blogger has a confession to make: I’m bad at math. And it turns out there are several more than ten items to touch on in Willie’s saga; so please stay with me.
10A. 1970- School desegregation in North Carolina was close to becoming a reality –if a limited one. Sixteen years after the Brown ruling; 13 since Dorothy Counts was run out of a Charlotte school, it was still just beginning. Further, integration was — and is still today– fitful, resisted and controversial.
That same summer, though, Willie put flesh on his sermons, and ran right into a buzzsaw. On paper, the idea sounded innocuous: Vacation Bible School. At thousands of churches, VBS is an annual event, as routine and bland as juice and cookies.
Not this one. Willie organized it cooperatively with several other area churches, on an integrated basis; about half of the hundred pupils attending were non-white.
Internally, the VBS was a success, but it engulfed Winston-Salem Friends (WSFM) in an intense uproar. As Willie put it:
“Nothing like this had ever been done in a Friends meeting in North Carolina Yearly Meeting. We felt like the pioneers must have felt. We knew the risk. To the dissidents, no greater sacrilege had been committed since Antiochus Epiphanes had sacrificed a pig on the altar of the [conquered ancient Jewish] temple. We knew that we might well lose half of our members or more.”
A coin to honor Antiochus IV Epiphanes, circa 175 BC.
[NOTE: Few but bible-o-philes will know this pig reference alludes to the Second Book of the Maccabees (Chapters 4-10), part of the Catholic version of the Bible, but not included by most Protestants. An inscription on the back of the coin hails Antiochus as “God Manifest”, a title Jews and Christians considered blasphemous. His pagan pig roast also kindled a violent rebellion.]
Soon thereafter, Willie agreed to have WSFM host a training class by the American Friends Service Committee for draft counselors (many other meetings, mostly liberal, did so too). The classes were quiet, bookish and entirely legal. Still, they were also candidly antiwar, specialized in sharing ways to avoid being conscripted into the Army (and in their discreet way they were very effective). At WSFM they produced another uproar; but Willie supported and continued to preach about both concerns.
“I was not overbearing about it,” he wrote. “And I did not harp . . . but I was frank . . . in challenging their thinking with the Scripture and with the traditional Quaker position . . . . It soon became clear that they had not been accustomed to having such subjects mentioned from the pulpit.”
In fact, bridges too far. Before long, his frankness, however measured, pinned a target on Willie’s back in NCYM-FUM. There were numerous threats and disruptions in worship & other gatherings. He got lots of hate mail, telephone and other threats. He even learned how to wire his car hood shut to prevent bombs being placed under it.
1972- Willie did have some supporters in the meeting, perhaps even a majority. But the opposition was fierce and adamant. That year, NCYM leaders stepped in, and after fruitless efforts at mediation, recommended that WSFM officially divide. More than a hundred members withdrew, and started a new meeting elsewhere in Forsyth County.
(Also in 1972, Willie Sr. passed away. Kathy’s biography notes that his house still had no indoor plumbing, despite relative prosperity. But Willie’s father had still lived frugally, especially so he could keep sending donations the John Birch Society and rightwing preachers (who remained staunch defenders of segregation). Willie Jr. was still a working pastor, as his father had desired, but the son’s religion had evolved far from the father’s views.
The Winston-Salem meeting struggles were plenty for Willie and Agnes to juggle. But on a day in the early1970s, one more big challenge fell unexpected into Willie’s lap.
His teenage son Rick came to him.
“Dad,” he said, “I have something to tell you.”
What was it?
That’s for the next installment.
(Hint: it wasn’t about the car.)
[NOTE: Some of this post was adapted from a biographical paper that was 20,000 words, researched and written by Willie’s daughter Kathryn Adams. It was supplemented, for historical context, by a close reading of David Cunningham’s indispensable book, Klansville USA, and repeated forays into the resources of the internet.
Now I eagerly await for the third part.