Erik S. Gellman - The Gospel of the Working Class: Labors Southern Prophets in New Deal America

THE WORKING CLASS IN AMERICAN HISTORY

Editorial Advisors

James R. Barrett

Alice Kessler-Harris

Nelson Lichtenstein

David Montgomery

A list of books in the series appears at the end of this book.

Map: The World of Whitfield and Williams

The Gospel of the Working Class

Labors Southern Prophets in New Deal America

ERIK S. GELLMAN
JAROD ROLL

University of Illinois Press

URBANA, CHICAGO, AND SPRINGFIELD

2011 by the Board of Trustees

of the University of Illinois

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 C P 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gellman, Erik S.

The gospel of the working class : labors Southern prophets in New Deal America / Erik S. Gellman, Jarod Roll.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. LaborReligious aspectsSouthern StatesChristianityHistory20th century. 2. United StatesSocial conditions19331945. 3. Williams, Claude Clossey, 18951979. 4. Whitfield, Owen H., 1892 I. Roll, Jarod. II. Title.

HD6338.2.U5s62 2011

331.6'3960730750922dc22 2011008561

ISBN 978-0-252-03630-9 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-252-07840-8 (paper)

Illustrations

11. R-E-V-I-V-A-L of TRUE RELIGION!
The 1945 Peoples Institute of Applied Religion Revival in Detroit.

Acknowledgments

This book has been a collaborative effort. During graduate school at Northwestern University, our research interests and conversations with our shared advisor and mentor, Nancy MacLean, encouraged us as scholars to challenge the political, geographic, and racial boundaries that so often rule the writing of modern American history. In these conversations, we swapped information (usually over beers) about an obscure sharecropper named Owen Whitfield. Whitfields life traversed our respective 1930s urban and rural research projects and seemed to call out for a different framework to understand the New Deal and World War II era of protest politics. After coauthoring an article about Whitfield for the Journal of Southern History, we decided that the story we wanted to tell was not complete, and could not be complete without also telling the story of Claude Williams, as well as the stories of Zella Whitfield, Joyce Williams, and a diverse cast of characters who sought to foment a religiousbased labor and civil rights movement in New Deal America. Throughout this process, colleagues have consistently wanted to know how we collaborated on a book together, especially when one author lives in Chicago and the other in Brighton, England. While piecing together this history has been both difficult and fascinating, our work together (truly a fifty-fifty collaboration) and not infrequent debates over interpretation have provided profound motivations and rewards, and we can only encourage more historians to do likewise.

We could not have completed this book without our own cast of indispensable characters. Martha Biondi and Liz McCabe read a draft of the book proposal and provided us with important early criticism and encouragement. Ken Fones-Wolf and Elizabeth Fones-Wolf have supported and challenged our work, in their own scholarship on religion and by sharing the podium with us at several conferences. Meeting in the Bronx with Mark Naison, who knew Claude Williams well, inspired us to continue and broaden our research. Ron Cohen provided us with key research leads about the musicians in this story, as well as lots of wry humor. Ron encouraged us to write to Pete Seeger, who generously shared stories about both Claude Williams and Owen Whitfield. Abram Van Engen, Robert Cook, and Simon Balto read the manuscript in full and suggested crucial changes, small and large. Emily Kelley provided a great map right when we needed it. We are especially thankful to Rhiannon Stephens, who not only read the entire manuscript (several times) but also provided key ideas that freed the narrative structure of the book. An anonymous reader, Michael Honey, and Nan Woodruff all read the manuscript for the press and provided detailed and cogent reports that shaped the final version.

Piecing together a history that stretches from Detroit to Mississippi was made possible by the generous assistance of archivists, librarians, and other scholars who all went beyond the call of duty to help us. Multiple visits and conversations with William LeFevre at the Reuther Library at Wayne State University helped us frame the project and discover new manuscripts and images, and Mary Wallace assisted us with the reproduction of those images. Both Erika Gottfried and Gail Malmgreen at the Tamiment Library in New York helped us track down oral histories and navigate the Cedric Belfrage papers. At the University of Tennessee, Jennifer Beals and especially Justin Eastwood unearthed new archival materials, including applied religion charts that were assumed lost, as well as important reel-to-reel recordings by Claude Williams that they generously converted to compact disc. Simon Balto provided timely research at the Wisconsin State Historical Society, Matt Nichter gave us several important research leads, while Barry Kernfield and James Quigel directed a precision strike into the voluminous United Mine Workers collection at Pennsylvania State University. Nancy Calhoun at the Muskogee Public Library, Jill Whitfill at Bethel College, and Susan Knight Gore at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church archives provided specific and essential pieces of information. At short notice Jeff Place threw open the doors of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections at the Smithsonian. And although their employer does not come off too well in this book, the archivists in the Records Management Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were always helpful and generous.

Last, we offer our sincere thanks to the Williams and Whitfield families. We are especially grateful to Shirley Whitfield Farmer, who has been so generous helping us to understand her parents lives and careers and is doing great work to keep their legacies living. We also offer gratitude to two fighters of fascism in our own families, Jack Gellman and Dorothy Bardwell Roll. Their voices were part of the gospel chorus of the working class in New Deal America.

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