Lest I leave you with the belief that the college’s alumni, Methodist friends, and others opposed the college’s decision to desegregate, today I’m sharing a few letters from supporters of the decision.
J. Claude Evans, a 1937 Wofford graduate, was serving as chaplain of Southern Methodist University in 1964. He had taken his seminary degree at Duke and had received an honorary degree from Wofford in 1957. He had entered the ministry in South Carolina in 1940, serving churches in Columbia, Walhalla, McCormick, and Clemson before becoming editor of the South Carolina Methodist Advocate in 1953. In 1958, he left the state to become chaplain at SMU.
I especially note his wording – his son had called long-distance, a rarity in those days – to share the news. Evans sympathized with the difficult decision Marsh and the trustees had to make. “But it places Wofford squarely behind the tenable educational theory that capacity to learn, and not race, should be the standard for admission.”
Wallace Fridy also wrote to support the decision. Fridy was a minister serving the St. John’s Methodist Church in Anderson. He was a Clemson graduate who had earned his seminary degree at Yale before entering the ministry in South Carolina. He had served several large churches in the state, and had represented the state at General and Jurisdictional Conferences. “You have certainly acted wisely and well in making this declaration of purpose. So, ‘mid the communications you will perhaps receive of the negative nature, I would like to add my positive word of appreciation. You have taken the wise and right course,” Fridy wrote.
The third letter comes from The Rev. T. Carlisle Cannon, who was older than the other two men. He was a Citadel graduate who entered the ministry in 1923 after graduating from Emory. He had served all over the state, from Pickens to Newberry to Columbia to Edgefield, and had been Sumter District Superintendent in the 1950s. His is perhaps the most emphatic letter in support of the college. Perhaps that’s because he was also a member of Wofford’s board of trustees.
“If there was ever a time when our Christian leaders in Church and State should speak out clearly and boldly about the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man, it is now. Our Christian colleges and universities cannot afford to lag behind in this all-important manner.”