wfn.org | UMNS# 05108-Methodists helped end segregation in Arkansas

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Methodists helped end segregation in Arkansas

Feb. 22, 2005	 News media contact:   Tim  Tanton * (615) 7425470*
Nashville {05108}

NOTE: Photographs and a UMTV report are available at
http://umns.umc.org.

A UMNS Report
By Jack E. Hill and Jan Snider*

When Sylvia Bell was growing up in Charleston, Ark., it was understood
that she would attend the same rugged, one-room schoolhouse that all the
other African-American children attended.

As a girl, she simply wanted to go to school. When she was 6, she would
sit on the steps in anticipation, listening through an open door as the
lone teacher guided the students in their studies.

But Sylvia never attended that school because Charleston did something
very bold. The town became the first school system in the South to
desegregate.

"Desegregation took place in Charleston in 1954," said Bell, now a
United Methodist minister.

Dale Bumpers, a leading member of the town's Methodist church, served as
the school board's attorney. "The over-riding thing, in my opinion, was
the morality of it," Bumpers said. "It should be done. It had to be
done."

Bumpers and Bell are two Methodists from different backgrounds who, in
their own way, played central roles in ending segregation in their small
Arkansas town. The integration of schools in Charleston came at the
beginning of a movement that swept through the South.

Bumpers-who later became a governor and U.S. senator-advised the school
board to desegregate even though he had not read the decision handed
down a few weeks earlier by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Brown v. the
Board of Education, the nation's highest court declared that "separate
but not equal" facilities for blacks were unconstitutional.

A month after that decision, the all-white Charleston School Board voted
unanimously to desegregate. It was the job of Superintendent Woodrow
Haynes to make it happen.

Bell's mother, Victoria Williams, recalled that Haynes gathered the
African-American families together to instruct them on how to handle the
change. He cautioned them to send their kids to school clean and without
runny noses.

"We'd always sent our kids clean; we never sent them dirty," Williams
said. "They might've worn the same clothes more than once a week, but
they were clean."

When school started, the bus rolled up with 11 black students.

"It was not a big incident," said Betty Bumpers, a third-grade teacher
and Dale's wife. "The only thing I was concerned about was complying
with Superintendent Haynes' instructions to the teachers that we were
not to talk about this situation to anyone.

"He wanted no publicity," she explained, "because he knew what would be
the result, that we'd probably be inundated with people from all over
the state-and the nation, for that matter."

When Haynes received calls from the press, he simply denied everything.
So quietly, the little town made history.

Bell sat out the first year of integration, but when she began school in
1955, the common prejudices of the day remained. Riding the bus to
school wasn't a problem, but stepping off the bus was another matter.

"As I step down from the bus, there's a little boy and he says 'Hey,
nigger!'" Bell said.

It made her mad. "He needed a lesson," she said.

She gave chase, but before she could catch up with him, a teacher
grabbed her. "'What do you think you're doing?' she asked, and I said,
'I'm chasing him because he called me a nigger,' and she said, 'That's
what you are.'"

As much as that stung, Bell said her teacher and others in the school
were welcoming. "Sometimes others can step in and erase what someone
else has done."

The local Methodist church found ways to reach out as well. In 1963, the
pastor approached Dale Bumpers and asked for money for a new roof on the
dilapidated Christian Methodist Episcopal church, where the black
families worshipped. Instead, Bumpers suggested the members of the
all-white Methodist church invite the African-Americans to worship with
them.

In his book, The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town, Bumpers recalled the
pastor fearing that chaos would result if blacks worshiped with whites
and that two of the church's most active women would walk out. "No they
won't," Bumpers replied. "They would be afraid they'd miss something."

The following Sunday, the sanctuary was packed for "the most dramatic
moment in the history of the church," according to Bumpers. "It was an
interesting sight to see black people walking into a Methodist church,
which had never had a black face in it, except maybe to attend a
funeral."

Bell's family was among them. She and her family were ushered to the
third pew, where they continued to sit for many years.

"These people came to Sunday school," Bumpers said. "They sat in classes
with us, and within three weeks, nobody thought anything about it."

Bell obviously thought a great deal about it.

"Perhaps if things had not happened in Charleston, I would not be
participating in what I am today," she said.

She is now the pastor of two small, all-white churches in Arkansas. A
black woman leading an all-white congregation-it's a role that never
would have been imagined before a little town took a big step.

# # #

*Hill is a freelance producer in Little Rock, Ark. Snider is a freelance
producer for United Methodist News Service in Nashville, Tenn.

News media contact: Tim Tanton, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

********************

United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org