Into the Sixites

John F. Veldhuizen

In the U.S.A.

I left a United Presbyterian Church parish of two small churches in southeast Ohio in October of 1959. My father, Anton Veldhuizen, is an immigrant from Holland. When I told him about the statewide economic boycott against Koinonia Farm, he said, "This is the United States of America and if you have the money you can buy anything you need."

When Joan and I and our two sons, Bruce (4) and Paul (one and a half) arrived at Koinonia Farm, I was elected to go into Americus and Albany to buy supplies since no one knew me. I was scared silly. I was very aware of the tinder box of hysterical rage in the community around Koinonia Farm. People felt desperate after the U.S. Supreme Court decision to integrate the schools in 1954. I was also acutely aware that I could be shot by the police or someone else if I made an "unhealthy" move.

About two months after we arrived I attended the sale barn auction in Americus. We occasionally bought and sold some cattle there. We were allowed to do that because the sale barn was a federally franchised operation and the last thing people in Americus wanted was any kind of U.S. government investigation. The same was true for shipping pecans through the U.S. Post Office.

After I left the sale barn I stopped at the hardware store in Americus to pick up some supplies, including two lengths of galvanized water pipe. The pipe came in 21-foot lengths, so I told the clerk I would be back in the afternoon with the truck.

When I arrived at Koinonia my father was unexpectedly there from Minnesota. He went with me to pick up the pipe. The manager met us at the door and said, "I want to see you in the basement." Sounded very serious. I knew the pipe was in the basement. In the basement he started almost yelling at me with a loud, angry voice. "You know you are not supposed to be buying anything in here. Thirty minutes after you were here everybody in town knew you'd been here. .." I asked, "What's the problem?" He wasn't making much sense. I asked, "Is there something wrong with our money?" He finally said, "It's not your money. You people don't believe the way we do. Now take your pipe, get out of here, and don't ever come back!!

My father could not believe what he was seeing and hearing. "This can't be happening in the US!" On the way back to the farm he said, "You know, they think more of the Negroes than they do of you."

From then on, I was out of the closet and I knew I had to deal with my overwhelming fear. Whenever I was at the sales barn there was a circle of empty bleachers around me, no matter how packed the barn was.

A couple of weeks later I was driving to Albany and got in touch with the fact that the presence and power of the Holy Spirit was always with me. At the same time I was very aware that the fifteen or so adults at Koinonia would be there no matter what happened. The only way they would not be there would be if someone came in and machine-gunned everybody. From then on, I was not afraid, even though I had plenty of reason to be. This was 1960, when John F. Kennedy was running for president of the USA and a year or two before Martin Luther King began leading the marches for civil rights.

When we arrived at Koinonia, Clarence and two of the other residents were in the process of planting 200 acres of pine trees with a tractor and a planter. The U.S. government paid to have the land in trees rather than peanuts or cotton. One man sat on each side of the planter and dropped one seedling at a time into the slot to be planted as we drove along.

Clarence knew I had grown up on a farm in Minnesota so he asked me to drive the tractor. We were planting in the field south of the farm on the left side of the highway. After a few rounds we stopped for some reason in the middle of the field. Clarence got off the planter and looked back. "Yowee! LOOK AT THOSE STRAIGHT ROWS!!" Clarence was hopping around like he did when he got excited. He always got excited by any kind of excellence or any demonstration of integrity.

After moving to Koinonia, I wrote the state clerk of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church USA asking what Northern Presbyterian Church presbytery I was in at Koinonia Farm. His associate wrote back with three choices, including the Presbytery of Knox-Hodge, which covered the whole state of Georgia. Why three choices?

I showed the letter to Clarence. He started chuckling, like he often did, and said, "Well, the white churches have their membership outside the state!" "You mean we've got segregated presbyteries in the Northern Presbyterian Church?" "That's right." "But that can't be!"

I was a naive, young man two years out of seminary. In seminary we had been very critical of the United Methodist Church's Central Jurisdiction which was all black. And here we had the same thing in the United Presbyterian Church USA!!

I transferred my membership to the Presbytery of Knox-Hodge the only white person in the whole presbytery and synod, which covered all of South Carolina and Georgia.

Near the end of our stay at Koinonia I drove into the Americus bus depot to pick up a man who was a priest in the Church of England. He was in the United States doing a series of broadcasts on religious life in America for the BBC. As we drove by Rehoboth Baptist Church I told him how the people at Koinonia had been excommunicated for "bringing people of other races into the church." That was in 1953 and this was 1961. He wanted to attend a church service there and see how the people felt about that now.

The next morning was Sunday. We went together to church. It was a communion service. The church building was small and after the service he was on one side of the church chatting with people and I was on the opposite side. A deacon came by picking up the communion cups from the pews. When he got to me, he asked where I was living. "I'm living at Koinonia Farm." He immediately stopped picking up the communion glasses and walked off.

Outside, I started chatting with one of the teenage young men and I asked about the new building. "I'll show it to you." At the front of this education building was a door which opened into a room behind the pulpit. He opened the door. There was a football huddle of men in some kind of serious conversation. We went back outside. I stood leaning against this building waiting for my priest friend who was talking with some of the people there. He was not wearing a clerical collar

I suddenly realized I was surrounded with my back to the wall with a semi-circle of angry people around me. One of the men started walking back and forth in front of me punching the upper muscles of his arms, saying, "You can be thankful it's Sunday!" He was very angry. I knew that if I made any kind of physical move I most likely would be attacked and beaten up.

The priest saw what was happening. He came over and stood next to me. He told them who he was and why he was in the US --that he was making broadcasts for the BBC. The people of the church were outraged and, as I recall, they kept us there for about an hour and a half.

The next morning, Monday, an officer of the border patrol from Augusta came to Koinonia. He said that the police in Americus had called telling them that a man posing as a priest of the Church of England had been disrupting the worship service at Rehoboth Baptist Church. The Border Patrol Officer took a look at the priest's passport and left.

Living with Clarence Jordan was better than being in seminary. He knew his New Testament Greek and he tried to make all his decisions through the perspective of the New Testament.

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