In the summer of 1964, the Revd Ian Whyte – then a divinity student at the University of Glasgow and SCM member – was spending his time at the Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, often preaching at the local church in Alabama. Outside the beautiful surroundings of the college, particularly in neighbouring Mississippi, a deep and far-reaching struggle was taking place in the South: the Civil Rights Movement. Anxious to know what was happening in Mississippi, Ian pondered whether or not to join other students in the campaign that was building there.
In a letter to the Guardian newspaper, published 17 December 1964, Ian wrote, “Three volunteers were missing and others were under constant threat, and my Southern friends, though sympathetic, warned me to steer clear of this summer’s Civil Rights drive there. Yet after a few sleepless nights of dwelling on the possibilities I decided that I had really no alternative.” So, he got on a night bus after one evening service, embarking on the 320-mile journey to a town called Greenville on the Mississippi River. There, he would join 500 other students, many of them women and teenagers, in a campaign against segregation and for equal rights.
Despite President Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Bill in early July, the risks to these students were still extremely high. They faced the constant threat of violence and harassment everywhere they went, so much so that all the students received training on self-protection. Although the presence of federal police helped calm the situation during protests, state police would often turn a blind eye on acts of violence against black people. Living amidst this fear were normal folks, people like Albert Peters, who hosted Iain during his time in Greenville.
In an article in Life and Work magazine published in 2014, Iain said, “I asked [Albert] if he wasn’t afraid of having a young white volunteer in his house – many houses and churches had been bombed by segregationists and there was always the risk of bullets fired from passing cars. ‘Lawd no’ he said with a chuckle. ‘I’m 95. I’ve seen it all. They can’t do nothing to me now.’”
So what had led this young, energetic student from Scotland to this point?
“When I was a teenager, my contact with Trevor Huddleston led me to volunteer at the Christian Action office in London,” Ian recalls. At the time, Canon John Collins – an active and visionary leader in the campaigns for peace, reconciliation and nuclear disarmament – was based in the office, running the Defence and Aid Fund for victims of apartheid in South Africa. “I kept up this work after completing my first year at Glasgow in 1964, when one afternoon Canon John asked me how I was spending the summer. When I mentioned going to the Southern States, he said, ‘Go and see Martin’ and proceeded to give me a letter of introduction.”
It took Iain the whole summer to get the chance to talk with MLK. But in August, he sat down for a 30 minute chat. “I remember he asked me how the Civil Rights struggle was perceived in Scotland – I promised to do all I could to raise awareness of it back home. I gave a talk at Christian Action later, where MLK would also speak.”
Iain would later visit Clifford and Virginia Durr in Montgomery, after encouragement from Dr King. Clifford Durr was a lawyer and represented Rosa Parks in the case that resulted in the Montgomery bus boycott in 1958, while Virginia Durr was a prominent civil rights activist. Both were heroes of the movement, housing many volunteers during the historic Selma march in 1965. In 2015 Iain revisited the United States to take part in the anniversary march from Selma to Montgomery, raising funds for Anti Slavery International.
For Iain, these encounters were all part of a process: a process of working out a deep conviction for justice that tied together his faith, work and politics. While at Glasgow university, Iain was on the national ‘Politics Committee’ of SCM, which contributed in its small way to shaping national UK policy through its work on anti-racism.
Martin Luther King Jr. once famously said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’ Through our encounters with people across boundaries, cultures and experiences, we perhaps see a glimpse at the role we might all play in nudging that arc further still.
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