Afterword

Joe Pfister grew up in Northern California in the 1940s and 1950s. He attended the University of California, Berkeley; joined the Student Christian Movement; and studied psychology. Thinking he would eventually pursue a career in counseling, perhaps with a spiritual component to it, he enrolled at Union Theological Seminary in 1964. Once there, he found he was less interested in psychology than in the urban ministry work that was taking place in nearby Harlem....

To Be Both Prophet and Pastor

This chapter focuses on the growth of SIM as it recruited more students for interracial ministry placements. Notable placements included students who interned with Martin Luther King, Jr. and his father Martin Luther “Daddy” King, Sr. James Forbes, a young black minister, spent his summer with a laregly white Baptist church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Forbes would later in his career become the minister of the famous Riverside Church in New York City.

So That None Shall Be Afraid

This chapter covers the pilot project summer of the Student Interracial Ministry and the seven students (three white males, one white female, and three black males) who worked in the south during the summer of 1960. Of particular note is Jane Stembridge’s work with Ella Baker to start up the first office for SNCC in Atlanta, Georgia. This chapter also covers the creation of the founding charter for the organization and the establishment of SIM as an official civil rights group during the academic year 1960-1961, supported by the National Council of Churches and the Interseminary Movement and endorsed by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Council.

Seminarians in the Secular City

As SIM grew in size and geographic breadth, it also began to post more and more students in churches in urban areas and to learn that the problems of the city were far greater than those directly concerning the churches themselves. Thus SIM began to address concerns such as housing, unemployment, entrenched poverty, educational gaps, and more by developing a series of urban ministry programs in major cities across the country. In SIM’s final three years, its shifted its focus away from the interracial pastoral exchanges that had definied its early years and put most of its efforts into the new urban ministry programs.

Into the Heart of the Beast

Charles Sherrod was one of two SNCC students who began organizing in Southwest Georgia in 1961 what eventually became the Albany Movement. In 1964, he attended Union Theological Seminary in New York City to pursue an advanced degree and joined forces with SIM, recruiting a number of students who would travel to work with him in Georgia in greater numbers each year between 1965 and 1968. Students in Southwest Georgia encountered entrenched racism and white supremacy and focused their efforts on voter registration, electoral politics, economic development and education. As the term “Black Power” gained currency during these years, Sherrod interpreted it to mean black economic and political power and independence, and although most in the nation thought the Albany Movement long over, Sherrod and the SIM students continued to make great advances in Southwest Georgia.

Seminaries in the Storm

The final chapter documents the mainline churches and seminaries in the late sixties experiencing a series of crises in reponse to the great change of the decade. As inner city church membership declined, seminarians sought greater relevance and “authenticity” from their institutions and in their education. In 1968, this was capped off by death of Martin Luther King, and the Columbia Strike and the supportive response at neighboring Union Theological Seminary. As the nation turned its attention outward toward the war in Vietnam and inward toward increasingly volatile urban situtations, SIM was unable to attract needed financial support to continue its growing decentralized program of urban ministry projects, and it disbanded in late spring of 1968.

These Walls Will Shake

This chapter deals with the first major stirrings of racial change within the mainline churches, while at the same time documenting the growth of SIM as it spread its program into communities in the north and west as well as south. The chapter covers the March on Washington and the Civil Rights Act and how students on the ground perceived this period of great change. Students worked with notable movement figures including Kelly Miller Smith, Ralph Abernathy, and King, and worked with the Delta Ministry in Mississippi and as part of Freedom Summer in 1964.