The Last Segregated Hour: The Memphis Kneel-Ins and the Campaign for Southern Church Desegregation

Abstract

The Last Segregated Hour is a well-researched analysis of a church desegregation campaign in Memphis. The spectacle of integrated groups seeking to worship at all-white churches is a largely unexplored facet of the civil rights movement. These kneel-ins carried a different weight than other protest activities, as activists sought to expose moral hypocrisy and reconcile the church to Christ's teachings of brotherhood and love. Stephen R. Haynes focuses on kneel-ins at the 3,500-member Second Presbyterian Church (spc), where lay leaders routinely blocked integrated groups over a ten-month period beginning in early 1964. As Haynes points out, segregationists fought so hard at spc and elsewhere to make their churches “the last segregated hour” because, by the mid-1960s, white churches were rapidly becoming the last bastion of segregation. With the kneel-ins at spc as his case study, Haynes begins by providing a helpful overview of the use of the tactic during the movement. Responses to black visitors varied, but kneel-ins exposed the reality of racial discrimination in houses of worship and often sparked turmoil within the targeted churches. At spc, the visits highlighted an exclusion policy that was at odds with denominational pronouncements and prevented the church from hosting the denomination's annual general assembly. Later, moderate voices at spc, including the church's pastors, altered the term rules for lay leaders, which effectively overturned the closed-door policy. Segregationists on the losing end left to form a new congregation, seeing spc's desegregation as the last straw in a church and denomination trending further into liberalism.