Let There Be Light: A Prelude To African-American History Month in LaRue County, Kentucky

The following is an unpublished piece I wrote as part of a weekly supplement to a serial church history for Hodgenville United Methodist a couple of years back.  I began my look at the church's past by exploring the nearly forgotten names of remembrance upon its stained glass windows.  What developed was a weekly bulletin supplement exploring each window and the impact of the particular family designated.  Some 4 months into the series, holidays and church functions seemed to have postponed, permanently, the completion of the widow history supplements, thus this brief look at race and change in the 20th century was never given to the membership to read. Understand there is no criticism of either person or family.  History, as written fact, requires an impartial acceptance by the reader to steer their own conscience, not that of the deceased.  What transpired is a poignant example of a community's growth that began first with resistance to change due to years acceptance of social judgment based solely upon skin color.   I present it now in honor of "Black History Month."  gdg

Sometimes the soft, spectral light, glimmering through the leaded segments of stained glass in an ancient church window, diffuses an illumination from the past in a manner that we might find more pleasing than stark, white light, more pleasing still than stark, white reality.   For often the Spartanly honest memories of those gone before us can be troubling, even unsettling when not softened by time. Still, the soft hues of light, shown upon us today out of these multi-colored panes & nameplates we now honor, might compose a memory we desperately require now in order to avoid the emotional pains a church, and a people, may have suffered. The biographies presented to date have hinted at a time when Christian love and acceptance were limited by social norms. While it is not our duty to judge based upon modern ideology, it is important to understand the context of the society within which our founders and ancestors lived and worshipped.

The 19th century was a time of division in both our nation and within our denomination as Methodists. Discussion, then fierce debate, led to a regional division of the Methodist church in 1844 based upon acceptance of slavery. Still a young congregation, barely 5 years old, our church was renamed Hodgenville Methodist Episcopal South due to its geography and union with a culture which supported our church’s and state’s stance on an institution we'd never today fathom embracing, much less dying for in battle.  Such was not the case in the society of the middle 1800s when northern influence to abolish a generations old system of chattel met with stubborn resistance even from devoted Christians who had grown up as observers and participants of this church-sanctioned white-black, master-slave dichotomy.   The outside push to change a culture split a doctrine in America.  While it never excluded black membership, this change confirmed a division of humanity, even in the church, that was based solely upon race.

We fail to understand today the exact social setting of religion as it included and made excuse for slavery in its midst.  But for Lexington & Louisville, there were few segregated congregations of any faith worshipping solely as an organized body of Black Christians.  Rather each church, ironically but for those considering themselves to be "anti-slavery," included African-Americans, enslaved or free, for consideration as members.  Attendance was confined to specific galleries or pews, and death required clear lines of demarcation in burials, but membership was inclusive of both races.  Published records verify that on the eve of Lincoln's election the racial statistics of the Elizabethtown District reflected our local churches, including Hodgenville, averaged a 17% representation of Black members. 

By the end of the War, one which brought an end to slavery through the shed blood of thousands, this division was carried out to a more visible extreme by the widespread establishment of separate AME churches which, along with “Jim Crow” laws of the latter 19th century, worked to remove African
-American attendants altogether from virtually all Southern “white” churches. This was the new society that post-War Southerners of both races grew to accept. “Separate but equal” defined the next 5 generations. We would remain “Hodgenville MES” long after the meaning of that political split had been forgotten, until “unification” came in 1939. And despite the fact that Southern Methodists led the way in racial acceptance long before a Civil Rights Movement impacted the nation, members of churches like our own, coming out of a crippling Depression on the eve of a second World War, knew nothing but a segregated worship experience. Their children would grow up with a maturing attitude toward race, but this last generation struggled with a change forced upon them that their church had never before requested, much less demanded.   

With unification came a quick recognition of the impact of decades of segregation amongst our churches. One of the early actions of the new denomination was the acceptance of African-American leadership. Of the first two black Methodist ministers to be ordained as Bishops by a socially and racially unified church, Rev. Matthew Walker Clair Sr., the son of Virginia slaves, came home from Liberia to serve his final appointment in Kentucky, where he died in 1943. His son, Rev. Matthew W. Clair Jr., would also become a Bishop, a rare succession from father to son, & would eventually touch our own congregation at Hodgenville in the 1960s at a time when his message of racial unity was far from popular. 

The motives of the heart are neither right nor wrong when shaped by an environment considered normal and good. As such, we cannot condemn the social decisions of generations past. We can, though, learn from them. With the unrest of the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement, no rural Southern community escaped change, as none were exempt from a need for it. The same applied to
our own small town and its venerated Methodist church that only 20 years prior had renounced its old name for one that promoted unity and understanding.

Always considered “forward thinking” in its recognition of social need and readiness to become involved, Hodgenville United Methodist was blessed to have energetic role models, male and female, to steer us through the troubled waters of change. One of those, Allie Williams Handley, daughter of lay leader & legal defender Charles Williams, was especially skilled at passive confrontation to bring about reform. One of her most memorable accomplishments brought her praise as well as chastisement, and in the process caused some to leave our church family, including a major branch of a founding church & county family, the Enlows.

The descendants of Abraham and Jane Vernon Enlow have been so prolific in our church, certainly since our days in the original Main Street edifice, that we might not realize all the varied branches that have been represented among us over the years. This is especially true since the progeny of Rev. Robert Enlow, their 7th child, have remained so very active in this congregation through to the present day. Some of our members have as well claimed descent from one of Robert’s older brothers, Isham, the 3rd of Abraham Enlow’s children. Such is the case for the late Leonard Elva Enlow (1919-1990), better known in the community as “Buttermilk.” Born the son of Marvin Otis Enlow and Margaret Jane Wright, Leonard’s grandfather was Anthony Vernon Enlow (1857-1909), namesake of his uncle and Isham’s oldest brother, 19th century LaRue County physician Dr. Anthony Vernon Enlow, first born child of Abraham, who first perpetuated the maiden name of their mother, Jane Vernon. Isham (1819-1867), Leonard’s great grandfather, was married to Frances Thurman (1820-1885), thus uniting two prominent names in LaRue County history.

Sadly, not all persons can adjust readily to change. The invitation to African-American Methodist
Bishop and Civil Rights leader Rev. Matthew W. Clair, Jr. to speak to the Hodgenville congregation met with resistance from those not ready to adjust to the changes sweeping America. The Leonard Enlow family, and others, opted to leave our congregation rather than accept change. Tolerance, they deemed, was too costly so they, and we, paid the price of their loss to our church family due to intolerance. May their window, however, perpetually gleam from the memory of their longtime devotion to our church, and remind us today of the sacrifice of acceptance required as part of our Christian duty and service.