He “capitulated,” putting family survival ahead of his personal calling.  The Bishop sent him to a white church in Eufaula, on the Georgia border.  He lasted about five years before he was asked to leave.  While he didn’t burst the bubble of racism, he did push the envelope in various ways, eventually convincing his white parishioners that he wasn’t one of them and never would be.

 

That was his last church.  He spent the next few years on the edge of the civil rights movement, founding the Selma Inter-Religious Project, a support organization for civil rights activists.  He and his wife lived in Tuscaloosa, probably the most racially liberal town in Alabama.  He commuted to Selma, or wherever else he had to go.  

 

One of his main projects was turning the Freedom Quilting Bee, a co-operative established by local black women, into a major business.  With his New York ties, Walter was able to send the quilts to NYC to be auctioned.  Publicity and promotion led to munificent prices which the Alabama women used to improve their lives and that of their children.  The business lasted until 2012.

 

Fr. Walter left SIP in 1972.  What he did for the rest of his life is a little vague.  He ended up living in a cabin in Sewanee, TN.

 

This book could use a time line as it’s sometimes hard to tell what happened when. For example, Fr. Walter was married twice but one only knows that because there are two names for wives but no dates for marriage or divorce.  It’s full of history and vignettes.  Between the family stories and the personal anecdotes, you learn a lot about the white South.  

 

 ©2021  Jo Freeman for SeniorWomen.com

 

Editor's Note: Jo is almost finished with her book Tell It Like It Is: Living History in the Southern Civil Rights Movement, 1965-66.  Jo’s mother was also an Alabama apostate.  She left the state shortly after Jo was born.