The Graduation Class of the CDGM Head Start Program, Porterville Center, Mississippi, August 27, 1967. Pearl: 417
On a mid-August day in Mississippi in 1967, a group of Black children donned graduation caps and celebrated their completion of the Head Start Program.
In February 1964, the Rev. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake (1906-1985), Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA) and chairman of the National Council of Churches’ Commission on Religion and Race, had presented a proposal for a long-term civil rights project in the Mississippi River Delta. In 1965, the newly created Delta Ministry played a central role in the creation of the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM), a statewide Head Start program.
The students enrolled in the Head Start program received meals, medical care and preschool education. The kids weren’t the only ones who benefitted from CDGM — the staff did, too. Many of those involved were working-class Black women with little formal education who had struggled to find employment elsewhere.
Just five months before the featured photograph was taken, four Klansmen had set fire to an eight-foot cross at the entrance of the Mount Beulah Conference Center, the Delta Ministry’s headquarters. Despite this event, and the opposition from the segregationist leaders of the area’s predominantly white churches, the Delta Ministry and CDGM counted many influential Presbyterian clergy amongst its supporters who rallied to their defense.
Although CDGM ceased operations in 1968, its three-year existence continues to serve as a reminder of the UPCUSA’s role in the civil rights struggle.
Perla Belo, via diginitymemorial.com. Cassette tape recording of Belo’s oral history. Pearl: 169061
In late August 1985, the first Asian American woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) sat down with Alice Brasfield to share her story. The Rev. Perla Belo’s oral history interview is digitized and available in Pearl.
Belo (1938-2020) had been ordained by the Presbytery of Seattle in July 1983 at University Presbyterian Church, where she served as associate pastor. She and her husband, Gasat Maza Belo, founded University Presbyterian’s International Friendship House, a ministry toward students at the University of Washington. From 1990 to 2004, Belo spent 14 years as director of Asian Ministries for the American Baptist Church, headquartered in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
In her interview with Brasfield, Belo speaks about the barriers to full participation felt by Asian Americans at U.S. seminaries. She notes that, rather than hire an Asian American professor to teach church history, or Greek, or ethics, seminaries were more likely to pigeonhole Asian professors into teaching Asian studies.
Belo also recounts the moving scene of her own ordination:
“It was … one of the highlights in my own life, being ordained. And … for me the highlight was when … I was kneeling and all the elders and all the ministers came to visit and put their hands on me. And I, I thought that was really so … A unique experience. I cried.”
Press release announcing the formation of the Covenant Network. Pearl: 286188
On August 15, 1997, a press release announced the formation of the Covenant Network. The names of the organization’s co-moderators can be found in the top corners of the document: Robert W. Bohl and John M. Buchanan.
This foundational announcement lives in the records of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, held at PHS. The Covenant Network’s mission and aim was the creation of a more inclusive church for LGBTQIA+ members and their families. Another key facet of its mission was a focus on creating unity among Presbyterians who disagreed about inclusion.
The creation of the Covenant Network stemmed from the 1996 General Assembly’s approval of Amendment G.60106b — also known as the “fidelity-chastity” amendment — to the Book of Order. The amendment was meant to bar LGBTQ Presbyterians from ordination by explicitly naming fidelity in marriage or chastity in singleness as ordination requirements.
Members of the Covenant Network were committed to fighting for the replacement of the “fidelity-chastity” amendment with Amendment A, or the “fidelity-integrity” amendment. They hoped to change the wording, swapping in integrity where chastity had been stressed: “Among these standards [for ordination] is the requirement to demonstrate fidelity and integrity in marriage or singleness and in all relationships of life.”
The organization fought for Amendment A from its founding in 1997 until 2011, when it was approved by the General Assembly. The Covenant Network then turned its focus toward marriage equality in the church by drafting and working to pass Amendment F, which would revise the section on marriage in the Book of Order to include same-sex relationships. Amendment F was passed in 2014, and the Covenant Network of Presbyterians is still active today.
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