The History of MIFA continued Growing Crops In Clay September 15, 1968, is considered the date of the actual founding of MIFA. St. Mary's Cathedral was the site for a general meeting on that date attended by thirty invited representatives of various denominations. The constitution, presented by the Reverend Brinkley Morton of Grace St. Luke's Episcopal Church, was adopted unanimously. An interim board of seven was elected to represent the group and proceed with plans for incorporation. This included Dean William Dimmick, St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, Chairman; Reverend Henry Starks, St. James AME; Reverend Frank McRae, District Superintendent, United Methodist Church; Annabelle Whittemore, Episcopal layperson; Jerrold Moore, Assistant to the Mayor; Margaret Dichtel, Catholic layperson; and Autry Parker, layman of the Centenary United Methodist Church. The board was composed of representatives of various groups including five denominations; three members were clergy, four were lay persons, two were black, five white, and two were women. All came from downtown or mid-city churches. The interim board, assisted by attorney Rowlett Scott, met weekly until October 9th at which time the Charter of Incorporation and By-Laws were read and adopted unanimously. The Interim Board understood that for MIFA to succeed they would need to involve the decision makers of the various denominations as well as those who controlled the financial resources. A meeting was called for October 17, 1968, to which such leaders were invited. Here, the Board presented the background of MIFA, and asked for advice on direction and funding. MIFA was presented to the bishops or their clerical equivalents in the various denominations on November 24, 1968, at the Rivermont Hotel. Twenty-five persons attended. Dimmick presented the origins of MIFA, stressing the lack of unity in the religious sector in facing the problems of race, poverty, and old age. The church holds influence and power, and is expected to act, he concluded, so there is a need to harness this power through coordination, communication, and joint planning. The question of Jewish participation was raised, and was answered affirmatively. In regard to support by the Black community, the Reverend Henry Starks said Blacks would see the need for this kind of organization, and mentioned the necessity of building trust relationships. Edmund Orgill read a letter from the Chamber of Commerce stating the need for such an organization. Robert Troutmann announced the support of the Reverend Lloyd Barker, a Southern Baptist minister who was then chairing the Memphis Ministerial Association. The Interim Board asked those assembled to endorse MIFA, and to encourage their Memphis clergy and congregations to support and provide funds to launch the new organization. The budget was presented, fact sheets distributed, and a panel of three answered questions. For the next year the Interim Board continued to meet twice monthly, identifying their target membership and struggling to recruit new congregations and members. Steps were taken to begin seeking funds. Proposals were written, including one to the Meeman Foundation. A meeting chaired by Waddy West was held at Holy Communion Episcopal Church on April 12, 1969, with over one hundred persons attending. The program was a presentation on urban problems: the Reverend Robert Troutmann and social worker Elizabeth Poole discussed assistance to juvenile delinquents, and volunteer community leader Myra Dreifus informed the group about hungry children in the city's public schools. A committee headed by Autry Parker was appointed to work on problems of hunger in the local community. At the April Board meeting there were also changes in the by-laws to permit judicatories to vote. This had not formerly been allowed for fear that they would dominate the new organization, but it was now recognized that their complete participation was needed. Another change in rules encouraged membership by persons who had no connection with any member entity, meaning that persons who were involved in the community in secular agencies could now become board members of MIFA. This reflected the realization that as the organization attempted to establish itself in a community often unreceptive to its goals, it needed to seek support from all areas. Members of MIFA at that time were the Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Methodist judicatories; three groups, the Board of Missions of the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Planning Committee, and Barth House, the Episcopal student center at Memphis State University; a number of individuals called “Friends of MIFA” and eight congregations, three Catholic, St. Mary's, St, Peter's, and St. Patrick's; one Episcopalian, St. Mary's; two Methodist, First and Centenary; African Methodist Episcopal; and Second Baptist. Based on the experience of a similar organization in Kansas City, MIFA's founders had originally envisioned a membership composed of congregations. They were unsuccessful, however, in persuading large numbers of congregations to vote and join. There are several possible explanations for this: many congregations felt that while they might be willing to join as individuals, or through a group, they were opposed to the whole congregation's commitment to a program which the individual congregation was not able to control. Waddy West, one of those whose job it was to convince congregations to join, says that he and the other members of his committee met with little success because “governing bodies were reluctant to commit when they were unsure of what the organization stood for. The idea of joining together was new, as was having a central voice that would speak for all. Churches were frightened of this. The National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches were controversial, and this idea was linked in their minds with that.” To attorney Rowlett Scott, who was a close friend and parishioner of Dean Dimmick's, going to Episcopal vestries to ask them to join was “a strange experience. Their response was: 'Prove to us that this isn't some Communist social action plot.' We were not asking for much money, but people did not want to join.” This reaction surprised Waddy West, Walk Jones, and Frank Campbell as they tried to recruit congregations as MIFA members. Campbell felt that “if the religious community had any meaning, religion had to say something about social issues. Memphis is supposed to be a city of churches and synagogues. Why weren't they speaking out or acting?” He and his partner on the committee, Father Mark Geary talked to vestries and diocesan level groups without results. He admits he had not known “how tough it would be.” Dr. Peter Takayama believes that another factor inhibiting congregational membership in MIFA in the beginning was the lingering specter of race: “To many people ecumenical meant interracial, and was immediately controversial. Black church members regarded MIFA as just another White-sponsored organization which would do little to affect social problems. The White community saw MIFA as liberal, aggressive, while the Black community saw it as being innocuous.” He quotes one Memphian's opinion: “It's hard to grow crops in clay, and hard to grow MIFA in Memphis.” Like those of most new organizations, MIFA's beginnings were tenuous and fraught with peril. Conceived in order to give churches a vehicle for expression as one voice instead of many, and for accomplishing some things together which they were unable to do alone for the needy of the city, MIFA brought to Memphis a new conception of meeting social and urban problems. Annabelle Whittemore cites a positive factor in Memphis's being “the last bastion for regular church attendance with repeated reminders from the pulpit of the church's obligations to help the poor.” Dean Dimmick and other religious leaders at that time asserted that lay people could accomplish more in social action than could the clergy. “These messages,” says Mrs. Whittemore, “gave us the courage and energy to persevere.” Bishop Gates says, and most of those who have been consulted about the early days of MIFA agree, that it took a while for MIFA “to work out its identity and purpose. It grew by fits and starts.” At the meeting of the Interim Board on April 30th, Frank Campbell reported that over $30,000 had been raised, largely from the Meeman Foundation, the Presbyterian Church, U.S., and the United Methodist Church. These funds provided the selection and hiring of an executive director. Margaret Dichtel, chairman of the selection committee, worked with Frank McRae and in May, 1968, they hired the Reverend Berkley Poole, from Jackson, Tennessee. Poole remembers that when he came as full-time director there were “two elements on the board; one wanted MIFA to be a bridge among churches, the other wanted much more presence in social concerns. The latter is what appealed most to me.” When he arrived, he found there was no mandate for MIFA's direction. The identity of the organization was still uncertain. He feels now, in retrospect, that he was attempting an unreasonable and impossible task: to “be in the front lines, and still raise money. To be a reconciling presence in the community is always a dangerous position.” Poole's analysis is shared by others who participated in those times. Frank Campbell recalls MIFA's “great struggle to achieve credibility in the beginning. There was suspicion of a brand-new idea. People were hesitant in dealing with what they perceived to be do-gooders.” He thinks that the conception of MIFA as a “behind-the-scenes enabler” created a situation that was not viable because “there is no way to get support for an invisible entity.” There was a problem, as well, in the fact that the people who created MIFA, talented, well-motivated, and energetic as they were, could not carry their churches along with them. Support came, not from local churches, primarily, but from a local foundation and from the national church organizations outside of Memphis. MIFA rented its first office in May, 1969. It was one room at 43 South Cleveland, a space Frank Campbell describes as “tiny and dingy.” Walk Jones, second Vice President of the first MIFA Board of Directors speaks of those early days as “hard times. MIFA was broke, and involved in activities that were not popular.” Among those activities bravely undertaken in 1970 was a committee on Improving Police Community Relations, an effort prompted by an unusually large number of police killings of Black youths. Jones tried diligently to find a businessman who would chair such a meeting, to no avail. In spite of strong urging by Police Commissioner Frank Hallowman and the Chief of Police Henry Lux not to hold the meeting, MIFA proceeded as planned with Jones himself chairing the meeting, which was peaceful. In the face of open and decided opposition in the community, the committee was unable to accomplish its goals, however, disbanded. More successful was an Afro-American Studies Conference held at Memphis State University and co-sponsored with MIFA by their history department, the University Campus Chaplain Association, the Catholic Diocese, Education Office of the Episcopal Church, an agency of the Methodist Church, Memphis and Shelby County Human Relations Commission, and private individuals. Father William Greenspun was MIFA's representative in charge of the program. Although Poole says that some Board members felt threatened by the conference, it was attended by about two hundred persons, and was judged to have made a contribution. On January 30-31, 1971, MIFA sponsored an Orientation to the City for new clergy. It was organized by the Reverend Ed Goode, United Church of Christ minister, and staffed by ACTS Director Jones and his assistant, the Reverend Ted MacEachern. The Reverend Tom Kirk, who attended along with some members of his Catholic parish, says the conference inspired determination to do something to stop White flight from established city neighborhoods. MIFA became actively involved in stabilizing such a neighborhood in the Vollentine Evergreen Community Association, VECA. Poole says he acted as “the catalyst, the facilitator. MIFA was the midwife for VECA.” A MIFA Task Force on Juvenile Delinquency, led by the Reverend Gid Smith, then Associate Pastor of First United Methodist Church, was designed to help stabilize students returning from state correctional schools. MIFA helped the Fund for Needy School Children's efforts to match churches with public schools in providing services for poor students. Two newsletters were published during MIFA's initial year, one devoted to facts about poverty in Memphis and the Mid-South, and another dealing with attitudes and factors that could either ease or block Black-White relations. The first two years of its existence gave little indication of what MIFA was to eventually become, according to Frank McRae: “We were weak and limited. We were referred to as Mafia, not as MIFA. We knew we were doing band-aid work, but that was all the power we had.” Meeman Foundation funds began to run out, indicating a financial crisis and, in June of 1971, Berkeley Poole resigned as Executive Director to return to pastoral work. Next: The Phoenix Phenomenon