This is the story of a small town and a small church denomination that changed history.

I’m not speaking of the headline-grabbing kind of change, though at times there was bountiful media attention. But in tracing the history and in talking to those who made it, you can almost hear the soft footfalls of God’s people in critical moments of kingdom advance.

Selma (pop. 20,000) is a picturesque and stereotypical small town in the heart of Alabama. The main street of the town looks much like it must have looked a century ago. Some of the shops seem unchanged in the last 50 years, their weather-worn signs advertising services that must be almost extinct and products that surely are.

Fifty and 100 years ago, however, Selma was a very different town indeed. It was a town with separate services for Blacks and for whites, whether you wanted a drink of water, a bite to eat, or a hospital for critical care. Blacks and whites lived separate and highly contrasted lives, with different rights and freedoms. Black men, by law, were legally reckoned to be one-half person. Voting rights laws in the South were changed to make it difficult for Blacks to vote and thus to hold office. That gave them little power, then, to see justice, even to protect themselves against the bands of Ku Klux Klan who paraded through the city by the carloads and who sometimes brought violence against blacks and those who stood up for them.

Anticipating Emancipation

Nearly 150 years ago, with the Civil War raging on and no end in sight, a small denomination set up missions in several places in the South where they could minister to and educate Black families. While the attention of this largely Northern group of the Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPCNA) could hardly have been welcome in the Civil-War South, the mission work continued. The Reformed Presbyterian Church was known for taking a stand that the Bible forbids this type of slavery and was also known to have supported the Underground Railroad.

After the war, with the slaves freed, the Reformed Presbyterian Church consolidated its work and chose to focus on Selma. Priority was given to giving blacks a good education; so schools were set up even before a church was. Teachers were brought from various places around the U.S., many of them white teachers from the RPCNA. The quality of the education was so high that these schools for Black children gained a better reputation than surrounding schools for white children.

That emphasis on good education continued once the Selma Reformed Presbyterian Church was formed. The church oversaw the kindergarten and Knox Academy for many decades, finally ceding it to the public school system. Most of the adult members of the congregation have bachelor’s degrees and a significant number have advanced degrees.

Other ministries were operated as well, such as a hospital for Blacks, until integration did away with the need for a separate hospital. Activities were provided for Black youth, and what became the Selma YMCA now bears the name of one of Selma RPC’s pastors.

Civil Rights and Selma

In the middle of the 20th Century, Selma again became a focal point in a changing nation. Blacks had been freed from slavery for nearly a century but often had been denied rights that other Americans took for granted, such as the right to vote, the right to lawful assembly, and the right to equal access of public services such as restaurants, theaters, and hospitals. Southern states wrote some of these inequalities into their constitutions.

Amidst the turbulence and even violence of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, the Selma RP Church faithfully practiced what it preached—trusting God as sovereign over the nation, ministering to the poor and neglected, seeking reconciliation with all who would listen. Pastors such as Claude Brown gained such respect among Black and white leaders that he was able to converse and work even with leaders on opposing sides of entrenched issues.

Pastor Brown was one of the pastors who united to ask Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to visit Selma, and Pastor Brown was one of those who met with Dr. King when he arrived for a planning meeting. Prior to the historic Selma-to-Montgomery five-day civil rights march, there were confrontations of protesters and marchers with police. Though eyewitness accounts differ, most of the protests and marches appeared to be peaceful, in accord with Dr. King’s principle of nonviolent protest. Scores of protesters were jailed, however. Many were arrested for the smallest of infractions, such as driving with a burned-out license-plate bulb or failing to produce identification.

Several members of the Selma RP Church, some of them high school students, were rounded up during those marches and taken to jail. They were not permitted to make phone calls, even to get a message to loved ones to assure them that they were alive. Pastor Brown, because of his reputation in the town, was given free access to the prisoners and thus was able to bring food and toiletries and to send messages.

During this time only one group of whites was formed in Selma to join with the Blacks in their protests, and that group met in the Selma RP Church building. Some Reformed Presbyterians flew down from the North to join the marchers for the march to Selma.

Looking Back and Ahead

Today when most people think of Selma, they look back. The Selma RP Church has cooperated with the interest in civil rights history. Its old building looks much like it did when freed slaves worshiped there. Now tours sometimes come through the building, with tourists learning of the church’s place in the history books. Soon the former manse will be converted to a church museum to give a clearer picture of what happened and why.

Members of the Selma RPC see all this as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to explain why a small church denomination primarily from the North cared about Black slaves and Black freedmen when it was an unpopular cause. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate that the basis for the belief in human rights and freedoms came not merely from the U.S. Constitution but from principles of a sovereign Creator, one who directs our lives even today.

With a new pastor, new young people, and a new vigor to its vision, the Selma Reformed Presbyterian Church quietly teaches and preaches, offering a helping hand to the uneducated, the poor and outcast, to AIDS victims and drug addicts. It has a vision to begin to provide seminary training so that Reformed Black leaders can continue their biblical education.

With their quiet faithfulness to God’s Word and trust in His direction of their lives, when the next march of history steps through Selma, church members will already have paved the way.

—Drew Gordon

Drew is editor of the Witness. The editor would like to thank all those who contributed information and photos for this issue, especially the members of the Selma, Ala., RPC.