Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (50 page)

The plan failed because of the perspicacity of one man: Alexander Crummell. As soon as he heard of the southern bishops’ efforts, Crummell called together a Conference of Church Workers Among Colored People, which met in New York in the home of the aging John Peterson. Composed of black clergy and laity from across the country (and later friendly whites), the conference quickly formed itself into a united front against the Sewanee Canon and managed to get it defeated at the General Convention later that year. The status of black parishes remained in limbo, however, so the Conference of Church Workers became a permanent organization, meeting once a year to continue the struggle for equality within the denomination.
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Peter represented St. Philip’s at the 1884 conference, and Philip in 1885.

Perhaps because its editor T. Thomas Fortune was a devoted member of St. Philip’s, the
Globe
followed these events closely. Initially, the newspaper tried to put a positive spin on the proceedings. An article on the Sewanee Convention chose to “pass over its questionable terms” in favor of praising “southern white clergy, whose hearts were moulded
amid slavery and attuned to race domination of the worst kind [for] now honestly trying to cut themselves loose from the trammels of caste in the interests of the church, and to leave her free to develope [
sic
] herself on those catholic apostolic lines which are organically hers.” An account of the General Convention of 1884 seemed satisfied with the mere fact “that the advisability and necessity of more vigorous work among our people formed one of the principal topics” and with the agreement that more funds should be appropriated for that purpose.
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Truly, there was not much cause for optimism. The Conference of Church Workers eventually reached a compromise. It accepted the Sewanee Canon proposal that the General Convention would be allowed to establish a separate district for missionary work among black parishioners, but insisted that the district be placed under the authority of the national church and permitted to vote in the General Convention. States’ rights did not prevail, but segregation did. By the time St. Philip’s hosted the 1889 Conference of Church Workers Among Colored People, not even the
Age
was sanguine. The newspaper reported that one speaker delivered a paper posing the question, “Shall Expediency Take the Place of Christian Duty in the Church’s Work Among the Colored People?” and urged that the answer be no. Meeting the following week, the General Convention thought otherwise. “The majority report, exceedingly kind and courteous,” wrote George Bragg Jr., Episcopal minister and church historian, “diplomatically evaded the point at issue” and refused to intervene with the southern dioceses.
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Black Episcopalians would continue the struggle until well into the 1960s.

If the national prospects of black Episcopalians were bleak, the fortunes of St. Philip’s were contrastingly bright. Much of this was due to my great-grandfather’s drive and determination. As Maritcha remarked, Philip put “the stamp of his individuality” on every aspect of church life. Read through the church vestry minutes and you’ll see how many prominent positions he was elected to in these later decades: senior warden in 1875, 1879, 1880, then from 1884 until his death in 1891; delegate
to the Diocesan Convention in 1875 and 1889; delegate to the Conference of Church Workers Among Colored People in 1885. Philip obviously commanded the respect of his fellow parishioners. But then look at the time gaps and read through the minutes once again: Philip resigned from the vestry in 1875; although a candidate, he lost the elections of 1882 and 1883. And when a special election was held in 1883, he garnered only one measly vote as opposed to the other candidate’s twenty. It appears that Philip’s own fortunes within the church swung from favor to disfavor and then back again.

I can only surmise that Philip was a controversial figure at St. Philip’s. Maybe it was this aspect of her husband’s character that Elizabeth was alluding to when she wrote the vestry thanking them for their expressions of sympathy at the time of his death. “Impetuous in action and strong in personality,” she wrote, “he often differed from his colleagues in method of work, but the labour accomplished, and the welfare of the object once attained, the desire paramount in his mind was that a feeling of good-will and harmony should exist between himself and associates.”
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Here’s how I think of Philip: he still proceeded in his same methodical fashion when determining the best interests of his church. But he took counsel only with himself, and once convinced of the rightness of his position could become imperious, pursuing his goals with little regard to the opinions of others. He was intolerant of all opposition, and when others prevailed, he could become angry and petulant. In 1875, for example, he resigned from the vestry in a huff when it refused to reconsider the appointment of the new sexton, whom Philip no longer supported.
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On balance, however, Philip’s business acumen overcame whatever reservations his fellow parishioners might have had about him. The role of the vestry, led by its senior warden, was to oversee the secular interests of the church and ensure the smooth functioning of all its activities. It worked on behalf of the church community without necessarily concerning itself with broader social or political issues (with the exception of events transpiring in the national Episcopal Church). Philip proved to be masterful at making decisions and implementing them. In the process he centralized power in the hands of the vestry and its senior warden, bringing under their control entities as diverse as the music association, the allotment of pews, the cemetery, the Sunday school, and, most importantly, the church’s finances and choice of minister.

Dr. Bishop with the wardens and vestrymen of St. Philip’s Church, 1890. In the front row, Philip White is at left and Dr. Bishop is in the center. In the second row, Jerome B. Peterson is second from left and Peter W. Ray is third from left. (Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library)

After Hutchins C. Bishop was appointed rector in 1886, the two men went toe to toe over who had final authority in financial matters. Disclaiming “any desire to be autocratic” or to “exceed his authority,” Bishop nevertheless maintained that “all societies in the Church are under control of the rector and funds raised by them do not come under the jurisdiction of the Vestry.” Philip begged to differ, insisting that it was the vestry’s right to “control all sources of revenue.” I’m sure you can guess who won. A month later, the vestry decided that given St. Philip’s current financial state the rector needed to bring all fund-raising efforts in the church before the vestry.
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But Philip could be collaborative. In the postwar period, he and his vestrymen began to give women parishioners a more substantial role in church affairs. Cornelia Guignon was one of them. Although her sphere of action remained circumscribed, it went far beyond what had been permissible in earlier decades.

The vestrymen’s minutes make it clear that they considered the projects of church women to be ancillary to their own and to fall under their purview. In 1875, while Philip was still senior warden, Cornelia and her friend Elizabeth Graham (the now married Elizabeth Jennings who had successfully sued the railroad company in the 1850s) wrote an exquisitely polite letter to the vestry stating that they had started the Women’s Missionary Association of St. Philip’s. With its explicit missionary purpose of sending aid to churches in Haiti and Africa, this female association stood in stark contrast to the vestry’s single-minded focus on building up the parish. With considerable rhetorical skill, Cornelia and Elizabeth proceeded to “most earnestly and affectionately desire your honorable body to extend to them your hearty cooperation and spiritual supervision in every direction that may tend to make their enterprise useful and successful.” Instead of help, however, the two women received a stern reprimand for having organized the association without the vestry’s “sanction or approval.” The women’s response was a masterpiece of diplomacy: they began by reaffirming the importance of missionary work, offered profuse apologies for neglecting to obtain the vestry’s approval, and concluded by requesting ratification of the organization, since “consent cannot be consistently asked for that which is already in operation.”
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The vestry relented, and the association proceeded with its fund-raising efforts.

Maybe the vestry caved in because, as a correspondent to the
Age
later observed, “every day it becomes more evident that women are the life of our churches.” This was especially true in the area of fund-raising. Peruse newspapers or vestry minutes and you’ll come across mention after mention of church women’s fund-raising activities, each more novel than the last: a performance of the comedy “Married for Money,” by the same Charles Mathews who had mocked James Hewlett’s acting
abilities decades earlier, followed by a “handsome supper” prepared under Cornelia’s supervision; “an artistic needlework and Apron Bazaar” sponsored by the Ladies’ Sewing Circle, with a “bonafide Gypsy skilled in Palmistry” thrown in for good measure; the making of an “Autograph Quilt” to help pay off the debt on the church’s organ.
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Despite St. Philip’s conservatism on issues of gender, there was one project in which the church’s men and women operated as equals, indeed in which women took the leading role: the St. Philip’s Parish Home. In 1870, the Sisterhood of St. Philip’s proposed establishing a place that would “provide a Comfortable Home for the Aged, infirm and destitute members of St Philip’s Church.” To that purpose, an independent society, composed of a board of twenty-two managers, was incorporated a year later. Almost half of the managers listed in the certificate of incorporation were women. Next to the names of Philip White, James Mars, and Peter Ray, I found those of Cornelia and Philip’s wife, Elizabeth.
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Cornelia was responsible for much of the parish home’s success. Taking the lead, she and the other managers attended to both the spiritual and the temporal needs of its five to ten impoverished occupants living in the home at 127 West Thirtieth Street. John Peterson conducted services on the premise every Friday evening, while Cornelia concocted entertainments of all sorts. A tradition particularly popular with the “old ladies” of the home was a “Lady Washington Tea Party” in which a woman manager played the part of Lady Washington by powdering her hair and serving tea to all assembled.

Over time, Cornelia took on more onerous duties. Quite amazingly, she was appointed treasurer of the society. As an independent corporation, it received no regular stipend from St. Philip’s but relied exclusively on voluntary contributions. Cornelia scrounged for funds and resorted to every tactic she could think of. She regularly appealed to the vestry for help in paying the interest on the lease. She raised money using the pages of the
Freeman
and the
Age
to ask for donations. One of her appeals involved a promotional scheme developed by the soap manufacturer Charles Higgins, who had promised to distribute thirty-five thousand dollars to charitable institutions of New York and Brooklyn in the following manner:

Each cake of German Laundry Soap is wrapped in a blue wrapper, and printed on each is the name of Chas. S. Higgins’s German Laundry Soap, encircling a trade mark, “Colored Woman at Washtub.” The consumers of the soap can send the wrapper to the institutions they may select, where they will be taken care of, and at the end of the year, the wrappers received at the different institutions will be counted by a committee of three citizens (selected by the Mayor of each city). These gentlemen will appropriate the amount as per the number of wrappers held by each institution.
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It’s hard to keep from wondering what the “Colored Woman at Washtub” looked like. Was she the laundress version of Aunt Jemima? A more virulent caricature? A more benign image? Did Cornelia have to swallow her pride to benefit a cause so dear to her heart? In any event, she made a forceful appeal to readers of the
Freeman
and the
Age
to send their wrappers to the parish home. I don’t know how many of them did, but the incident shows how creative she could be in the name of a mission she considered important.

Hoping to improve St. Philip’s financial situation, in 1877 the vestry decided to invest in real estate. It purchased a property on West Thirtieth Street, “good for tenements, stables and manufacturing,” and persuaded Trinity Church to hold the mortgage. Some months later, the St. Philip’s property committee shamefacedly admitted that “in the transaction attendant upon the negotiation of the loan and purchase of lease-hold, there may have been displayed a lack of business knowledge necessary for the consummation of such business satisfactory in all its detail.”
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