Carl D. Bennett

Help from Friends

During the forties and the fifties, through Koinonia's good times and bad, other Wesleyan College faculty members and I visited the Farm, sometimes bringing along a group of Wesleyan students or members of a Quaker project housed at Morehouse College, which Margaret Bennett and I directed the summers of 1953 and 1954.

We were always warmly welcomed by Clarence and Florence Jordan, and we learned so much from them and other Koinonia residents about organic farming and the Farm's generous sharing of resources and agricultural "know-how" with residents of Sumter County.

And we were awed and inspired by the Christian courage, the grace under persecution that came upon the Koinonia community when, to their witness of pacifism and Christian communism, was added an even less tolerable challenge to local prejudices in the form of racial integration of Koinonia's membership.

In the state press and on visits we learned about the progressive ostracizing of Koinonia personnel from fellowship in local churches, and we read reports of sporadic violence, ranging from cutting fences and destroying young trees to arson of a roadside stand.

On one visit we were shown the path of machine gun fire that tore through the Jordan home on a night the National Guard was scheduled to meet. The room was marked by the tracer bullets that set the curtains on fire. And I stood by a shattered mirror which had been pierced by high-powered rifle when Eleanor Jordan, home from university, had stepped into her father's study and turned on the light. Fortunately, the spent slug had passed through the walls and dropped harmlessly into a closet. The accelerating violence was accompanied by an intensive boycott of Koinonia by local merchants. One holdout was the local feed and seed store operated by a Macon firm. Then, one Sunday morning the front of this store was dynamited.

A particular problem for Koinonia was the need for fuel oil to protect the farm's poultry shelters. Distributors in the Americus area were intimidated into refusing to sell to Koinonia.

It was at about this time that Tom Gossett, then a colleague of mine at Wesleyan College, determined to do something about it. He took me along on his rounds of the Macon and Bibb County fuel distributors and at last we found a merchant who was willing to sell oil to Koinonia. The merchant stipulated, however, that Koinonia personnel would have to meet him at a neutral spot between Macon and Americus, for he had an understandable concern that his own trucks might be fired on if they attempted direct deliveries to Koinonia Farm.

Over the years we have been grateful for the slow but steady reconciliation between Koinonia and the Americus area, and we rejoice when we think of what the Koinonia witness has produced, including its spin-off, Habitat for Humanity.