Segregation will obtain in the International Sunday School Convention at Birmingham, Ala. The Birmingham Committee has not receded one iota from its plan to segregate Negros on the main floor instead of the gallery.
The A.M.E. Zion, A.M.E., and C.M.E. denominations have issued official statements of withdrawal from the Birmingham Convention and advising their constituents to stay away. In addition to this, formal protest is being made to eight of the 12 state organizations in which Negroes are members and in some of which already have credentials. The Boston Post has taken editorial cognizance of the protests of Drs. B.W. Swain and Jacob W. Powell for years honored members of the Massachusetts Council of Religious Education (formerly State Sunday School Association). The Chicago Daily News carried the story with a reply by Dr. Hugh S. Magill. The New York World and the daily press all over America, the Associated Negro Press, and the leading Negro papers of the country have given space to this segregation issue. Numerous schools, conventions, ministers unions have passed resolutions of protest against the unchristian and undemocratic conduct of the American leaders of Protestant religious education. A few white leaders in religious education, North and South, have joined Negro leaders in protest against segregation in Christian assembly.
A telegram has been received from Mathew J. Trenery saying that the Church School Department of the Methodist Episcopal Church does not favor segregation but is in harmony with the International Council in segregating Negroes in Birmingham Convention according to the ordinance of the city.
In an interview published by the New York Age on Feb. 27th, Dr. S.N. Vass is credited with including the A.M.E. Zion Church in the group that met Dr. Hopkins at Nashville for the second time who voted unanimous support of the Birmingham Convention. This is a gross misstatement of the facts. The A.M.E. Zion Church did not participate in that Conference nor instruct anybody to vote for it. Having had a letter from Dr. Vass in which he said he expected Dr. Hopkins to present some “jim-crow arrangement” of seats for Negro delegates on the main floor and to have that in mind in writing him in the event we would be present, an officer of the Religious Education Department wrote Dr. Vass:
“The historic position of the A.M.E. Zion Church is against segregation, and we see no reason to recede from that position in this instance.” The Star of Zion (Charlote, N.C.), the denomination’s official organ, whose editor was secretary of our press release committee, said editorially (Feb. 11th): “The Star of Zion and the A.M.E. Zion Church are opposed to segregation whether proposed or endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan or the internation Council of Religious Education.”
Segregation is segregation, whether in the gallery or on the front row of the main floor, and the A.M.E. Zion church, true to its traditions, has not receded and will not recede from its position as announced that we shall certify to the Birmingham Convention unless our representatives are guaranteed the rights and privileges of any other delegate in the convention.
--Religious Education Department, Chicago.
From the front page of The Star of Zion, The Official Organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Charlotte, N.C., Thursday, March 11, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sf88092969/1926-03-11/ed-1/seq-1/
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