Helen G. Bradley

Terrifying Memories, 1954-1957

Many who write will have warm and fond memories of Koinonia; mine, while certainly including some treasured friendships, tend to be rather terrifying.

I came to Americus, Georgia, in 1954, a bride of less than a year. My husband, Paul Ritch, was called as the rector of the local Episcopal church. He was just a year out of seminary, and I was fresh from Radcliffe College and had never even visited the South let alone lived there, except for a few months in my husband's native state of North Carolina. I had heard about Southern ways-- and particularly segregation-­but I had never personally experienced it. The only black people I had ever known were Harvard and Radcliffe students, who had impressed me as being little different from myself.

Americus of 1954 was a real shock! Half the population --the black half-- appeared to live in a kind of poverty I had never seen and were perennially out of work, since there was no industry to speak of. They would knock on the door, asking for any kind of labor. I was pressured by the good ladies of the church to hire a maid after my first child was born ("nice " women don't do their own housework), and she worked for $1.00 a day. After a year I doubled her salary and was roundly criticized for doing so ("spoiling them," I was told). I have never been exactly a shrinking violet about expressing my opinions, and at 22 I didn't have much political savvy. I was understandably unpopular, and after mentioning that I had dated black boys at Harvard --was no longer welcome in some homes. This was the environment in which I first came into contact with Koinonia.

Koinonia Farm had been there for some years, as I recall, with little incident. However, shortly after we arrived in Americus the University of Georgia-- to deter black students from entering--passed a ruling that all applicants had to have an alumnus sponsor. Clarence Jordan, a bona fide alum, enraged everyone by sponsoring a black student and then all hell broke loose. He was accused of being a communist and brought before a grand jury. We had made a few friends at the Farm and had met Clarence, so my husband was asked to testify as a character witness for him. I remember distinctly because I was in the hospital with my second child --March 1957. When Paul insisted that Clarence Jordan was a good Christian man and anything but a communist, he was accused of being a fool and a dupe!

Immediately, things started to happen. Our two closest friends at the Farm, Connie and Ora Brown, had beautiful singing voices and had begun-- at Paul's invitation-- singing in the church choir. Parishioners suddenly began complaining that they couldn't worship God with those two “nigger-lovers" sitting up there. The Browns ceased coming to save Paul from conflict with his parish. Incidentally, at the same time, I found that I could no longer get an appointment to have my hair done; they were always fully booked.

Then the boycott and the violence began. Local stores that had bought feed and other products from Koinonia were informed that they should no longer do business with the Farm. To illustrate the point, a feed store across from the Court House was firebombed on Christmas Eve. The Koinonia's own store along the highway to Albany was destroyed. (We were given one of the hams retrieved from the ruins--charred on the outside but still delicious inside.) The worst came when a group of men (never identified or tried) drove past the Farm late at night and used a machine gun to shoot into the buildings where people--including children-- were sleeping. Connie and Ora's little girl was nearly hit.

Paul Ritch was never exactly a crusader and believed that his first responsibility was to gently change his parishioners racial biases, but the shooting incident was too much. He and a group of local ministers issued a statement criticizing the violence and calling for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. Almost immediately, a cross was burned on the lawn of the Methodist minister's house, and he was speedily transferred by his church to another district.

I was terrified by all of this--particularly since we had two tiny girls, both under two years old. I was afraid that someone would throw a bomb through the window of their room or do something equally horrible, since whoever was behind the violence seemed capable of almost anything. Paul, too, was beginning to feel that his stand had alienated so many of his parishioners that his ability to influence them had been seriously compromised. His bishop came to the rescue, and he received a call to a church in Florida. We left Americus in late 1957 with great relief.

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