{"id":19124,"date":"2012-12-10T09:50:59","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T15:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/?p=19124"},"modified":"2014-09-23T08:31:12","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T13:31:12","slug":"civil-rights-activist-donates-papers-um","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/civil-rights-activist-donates-papers-um\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil rights activist donates papers to UM"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Sorting Bishop Duncan Gray Jr.\u2019s mail into two stacks \u2014 the \u201cgood\u201d and the \u201cbad\u201d \u2014 was a considerable task at the height of the civil rights movement in Mississippi.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The small-town Episcopalian priest, known nationally for his nonviolent and pro-equality stance that segregation was incompatible with the Christian faith, received piles of letters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A selection of Gray\u2019s papers, including correspondence from the 1960s, are open to the public for viewing this fall in the University of Mississippi\u2019s Archives and Special Collections. Among the hundreds of papers the bishop donated to the university \u2014 a collection that spans from the 1960s to the 1990s \u2014 are newspaper clippings, Ku Klux Klan pamphlets the bishop received in the mail and correspondence from churchmen all over the nation, pledging their support.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother tried to sort them \u2014 good pile, bad pile,\u201d said the bishop\u2019s son, Bishop Duncan Gray III, who was an eighth-grader in September 1962, when his father plunged into a crowd of rioters, trying to calm the mob as they protested James Meredith\u2019s integration of Ole Miss.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe bad pile was very predictable,\u201d Gray III said. \u201cThe good pile, I remember being touched. Dad got letters from people all over the country, but he also got letters from simple, inarticulate people, some who identified themselves as African-Americans. The simple poignancy of those, even as an eighth- and ninth-grader, I was touched by.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As Gray Jr. lived out his calling to the ordained ministry, first in seminary and later in various churches in Mississippi, he found himself over and over again placed in locations at integral times in the civil rights era.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the Canton native\u2019s senior year as a seminary student at the University of the South at Sewanee, the entire seminary faculty resigned in protest over the university\u2019s decision against admitting its first African-American student. During his time in Cleveland, Miss., the Supreme Court upheld Brown v. Board of Education<\/em>, and Emmett Till was murdered just down the road. Following his tenure in Oxford in 1965, Gray moved his family to Meridian in the aftermath of the Neshoba County killings and in the midst of church and synagogue bombings. He preached for equality and nonviolence through it all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBishop Gray\u2019s legacy casts a long shadow,\u201d said Jennifer Ford, head of the archives and special collections. \u201cHe preached acceptance, calm and nonviolence and accepting integration, and he did it in such a noble way that his legacy is hard to discount. In fact, it\u2019s still going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was while serving at St. Peter\u2019s Episcopal Church in Oxford that Gray became a fixture in Mississippi history. Just hours before the Sept. 30, 1962 riots broke out on the UM campus, he took to the pulpit, preaching one of his now-famous sermons admonishing violence and encouraging Meredith\u2019s admission:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cNo university in the world would defend this position rationally, and no Christian church would defend it morally,\u201d he said to a congregation that went silent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That evening, Gray and the university chaplain moved throughout the angry mob, removing bricks from their hands and encouraging them to go home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Later in the night, while pleading with Gen. Edwin Walker to discourage the rioters, Gray was pulled off the Confederate statue by the mob and beaten. It did not stop him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly I was scared,\u201d said Gray Jr. \u201cBut more than that, I felt just total disappointment and disgust that we had gotten in that bad of shape. What was going through my mind also was to do whatever I possibly could to minimize the effect and to calm things down to whatever degree I could. I wasn\u2019t very successful, of course, but that\u2019s what was going through my mind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI was deeply concerned about the university and deeply concerned about the town of Oxford and the state of Mississippi and what was being done to all three of these.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Among the letters is a note from Mississippi NAACP leader Aaron E. Henry, who penned a note on Oct. 8, 1962, voicing a sentiment that would have surely been sorted into the \u201cgood\u201d pile. He wrote: \u201cThe newspaper reports of your sermon Sunday give us all hope and courage for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Henry\u2019s letter is just one of many pieces in the Gray collection.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI think what [viewers of this collection] will see is a pastor, a priest trying to do his job,\u201d Gray III said. \u201cDad never really saw himself as a crusader, but he saw himself being placed in a particular moment at a particular time and being called by God to respond, not just to the issue but to the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gray\u2019s papers will be housed on the third floor of the J.D. Williams Library and will be open to the public for viewing in late fall. The civil rights collection also includes the papers of James Meredith, James Silver and Russell Barrett. A portion of the collection also was displayed Sept. 30 during the university\u2019s 50 years of integration commemorative event.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For more information about the collection or Archives and Special Collections, contact Jennifer Ford at 662-915-7639<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorting Bishop Duncan Gray Jr.\u2019s mail into two stacks \u2014 the \u201cgood\u201d and the \u201cbad\u201d \u2014 was a considerable task at the height of the civil rights movement in Mississippi.   The small-town Episcopalian priest, known nationally for his nonviolent and pro-equality stance that segregation was incompatible with the Christian faith, received piles of letters.Read the story …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,1143],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nCivil rights activist donates papers to UM - Ole Miss News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/civil-rights-activist-donates-papers-um\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Civil rights activist donates papers to UM - Ole Miss News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sorting Bishop Duncan Gray Jr.\u2019s mail into two stacks \u2014 the \u201cgood\u201d and the \u201cbad\u201d \u2014 was a considerable task at the height of the civil rights movement in Mississippi.   The small-town Episcopalian priest, known nationally for his nonviolent and pro-equality stance that segregation was incompatible with the Christian faith, received piles of letters.Read the story …\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/civil-rights-activist-donates-papers-um\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Ole Miss News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"-0001-11-30T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-09-23T13:31:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Graydocument-131x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@OleMissRebels\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@OleMissRebels\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/\",\"name\":\"Ole Miss News\",\"description\":\"The official source for University of Mississippi news\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/civil-rights-activist-donates-papers-um\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Graydocument-131x300.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/civil-rights-activist-donates-papers-um\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/civil-rights-activist-donates-papers-um\/\",\"name\":\"Civil rights activist donates papers to UM - 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