Building Knowledge & Breaking Barriers

Introduction Page 1

Building Knowledge and Breaking Barriers, like the three other initiatives featured below, advance PHS’s historic mission in exciting new ways--forming innovative and strategic partnerships and confronting systems of oppression in the archive. Click below to link to each initiative.

African American Leaders & Congregations | Building Knowledge & Breaking Barriers | LGBTQIA+ History | Religious News Service Photographs

The Presbyterian Historical Society is transforming the ways we serve. We're a national church archives for the 21st century, an engaged Philadelphia neighbor, and a friend to histories of faith around the world.

As we share information about new initiatives that connect with our mission to collect, preserve, and share Presbyterian history, we're asking how PHS can continue our tradition of excellent service in new ways.

Please fill out our patron survey and let us know how PHS can help tell your story and others through our collections.

You can also tell us your thoughts on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram: #PresbyHistory

--What story brought you to PHS's building, online catalogs, Pearl digital archives, or website?

--What materials tell that story?

--Whose stories make up what we think of as history?

--How do archival materials shape that history?

--What documents should PHS collect to tell more inclusive stories?

African American Leaders & Congregations Page 2

African American perspectives and experiences remain under-represented in the annals of Presbyterian history. This collecting initiative redoubles PHS's efforts to document Black lives, work, and witness in an increasingly multicultural Church—from the organization of the First African Presbyterian Church in 1807 to the election of the first African American stated clerk of the PC(USA) in 2016.

We are bringing human and capital resources to bear on collecting records of the Black Presbyterian experience--both the personal records of longtime church workers, and the original records of Black congregations. PHS seeks to represent in the archives the Black throughline: the integral presence of African Americans in what the authors of the historical volume Periscope called a “historically racist ecclesiastical body.”

Congregations are encouraged to use our deposit and digitization services. Historically Black congregations can have select volumes of their original session minutes and registers imaged at no cost. For information about deposit and digitization, please email Records Archivist David Staniunas.

Visit the African American History collection in Pearl.

Recent Collection Highlights:

Gayraud Wilmore Papers, 1848-2019, RG 526. Gayraud Wilmore was a theologian, scholar, and activist. He was named the first executive director of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.'s Commission on Religion and Race (CORAR) in 1963. He traveled to Presbyterian churches to train pastors in how to organize protests and lobby for civil rights, and joined demonstrations throughout the South. Wilmore also helped found the National Conference of Black Churchmen in 1969 and was instrumental in the creation of the UPCUSA Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People in 1970. He served as the executive director of CORAR until 1972. He died in 2020. Our thanks to Jack and Carmen Wilmore for delivering these records to us in July of 2019.

View selections from the Wilmore papers in Pearl.

In a 1982 interview conducted at Newark Airport and in Rochester, N.Y., Wilmore reflects on "taking my own theology to the streets" as director of the UPCUSA Board of National Missions Division on Church and Race. "I am convinced that one cannot do theology from a library carrel or from a study desk."(Cassette 857-858)

African American Synods collection, 1873-1988, RG 395 consists of published minutes, select photographs, and newsletters of the historic UPCUSA all-Black governing bodies, including this gathering of leaders from the Synods of Atlantic and Catawba in the 1960s.

View selections from this collection in Pearl.

Katie Geneva Cannon papers, 1972-2018. Katie Geneva Cannon was the first Black woman ordained a minister of word and sacrament in the Presbyterian Church. She was born in 1950 in the Fisher Town neighborhood of Kannapolis, N.C., one of the seven children of Corine and Esau Cannon. She graduated from Barber-Scotia College (Concord, N.C.), completed a Doctor of Divinity at Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary, and was the first African American to complete a Doctor of Philosophy at Union Theological Seminary (New York, N.Y.). She was ordained by the UPCUSA Presbytery of Catawba in 1974. A definitive voice in Womanist theology, Cannon specialized in Womanist/feminist/mujerista ethics, teaching at Temple University, and Union Presbyterian Seminary in (Richmond, Va.). She died August 8, 2018. Our immense thanks go out to the Cannon family for delivering this material to PHS in 2020. Additional material from Katie's life and work is held at the Center for Womanist Leadership at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, and at Union Theological Seminary, New York, New York.

View selections from Katie Cannon's papers in Pearl.

Listen to a clip from a 1987 oral history with Katie here: (Cassette 1900)

First African Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia, Pa.) is the oldest Black Presbyterian congregation in the United States, organized in 1807 by John Gloucester, a man born into slavery in Tennessee in 1776. Extensive records of the session, and of the John Gloucester Memorial Society, are held in Record Group 314.

--Church of the Covenant (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.) was the first pastorate of William Drew Robeson, human rights champion, later pastor of Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church (Princeton, N.J.), and father of activist Paul Robeson. The church dissolved in 1895; its only volume of session minutes is held here. (V MI46 W652cs)

--Thelma C. Davidson Adair was the first African American woman moderator of the Presbyterian Church, elected by the 188th General Assembly in Baltimore in 1976. In a 2008 interview, Adair reflects on the work of Church Women United to create "causeways," uniting women across continents.

Building Knowledge & Breaking Barriers Page 3

This educational programming and exhibit project brings students from the Community College of Philadelphia together with 500 years of historic materials at PHS. Students are developing research and critical-thinking skills by investigating primary source documents. In early 2021, student leaders will install an exhibit recounting their research journeys and deconstructing “archives” as an idea, obstacle, and opportunity.

Learn more about Building Knowledge and Breaking Barriers at the project website: BKBBphilly.org

Through semester-long research projects, one-time repository visits, and engagement with online and facsimile versions of primary sources, students use the unique archival holdings at PHS to build their historical analysis skills and produce original scholarship. Student learning is supported by contextual essays and reading questions that help frame primary source documents and prompt critical reading. Professors provide scaffolding exercises to help students engage with complex topics and challenging source materials.

Community College of Philadelphia classes we have worked with to date include:

19th Century U.S. History
African American History to 1877
Religion in American History
Philadelphia History: Architecture and Planning
Creative Writing
Research Writing

Learn about the project's beginnings on the PHS blog or contact us directly to find out more.

Read two student essays from an earlier collaboration with Philadelphia community college students.

Survey a list of documents used by a history class in Spring 2019.

Access the Student Information Page for classes that have recently visited PHS.

Read student and other project blogs.

Explore an anthology of student fiction writing.

Building Knowledge and Breaking Barriers has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

LGBTQIA+ History Page 4

The forty-year movement for LGBTQIA+ inclusion in the PC(USA) and its two predecessor denominations comprises a vital recent chapter of American history. In honor of Pam McLucas Byers, the first executive director of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, PHS is collecting, preserving, and sharing stories from across the theological spectrum about ordination and marriage rights.

CLICK HERE to visit this collecting initiative's information page, including a LGBTQIA+ history in the PC(USA) timeline and collection finding aids.

Email the Reference Desk to learn more about the Pam Byers Memorial Collection and if you have materials to donate.

Financial support was provided by the PHS Pam Byers Memorial Fund.

Religious News Service Photographs Page 5

PHS holds a vast collection of Religious News Service photographs: 60,000 images depicting domestic and international religious news between 1945 and 1982. Through a digitization pilot project we are adding almost 500 RNS images to Pearl, the Society’s publicly accessible digital archives, and planning for the future digitization of this evocative ecumenical collection.

View the Religious News Service Photographs in Pearl.