Davidson College Presbyterian Church

Queer Christianity at Davidson College From the 1980s to the Present

November 13, 2021 by ispadalecki@davidson.edu

L. Collins, L. Walton, C. Clawson, with I. Padalecki

This post, utilizing primarily the oral history of a lesbian Davidson alumni couple, Heather McKee (‘87) and Jane Campbell (‘87), will examine how Christianity and Christian spaces within Davidson College’s history have impacted the experiences of queer students at Davidson. While for some queer students, Davidson’s Christian identity contributed to an isolating environment, others experienced Christianity as a means of companionship and acceptance. We treat the legacy of this tension as a phenomenon of changing experiences over time, chronicling student life from earlier decades up to the current campus culture in 2021 and examining how queer experiences of Christianity at Davidson have both changed and stayed the same across time.

Queer Isolation and Christianity at Davidson in the 1980s

Davidson College has been affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, specifically the Davidson College Presbyterian Church (DCPC), since its founding in 1837. ¹In 1985—while Heather McKee and Jane Campbell were students at Davidson—the denomination declared lesbian and gay full church membership unconstitutional. ² Davidson’s affiliation with this church—which, at the time of McKee and Campbell’s time on campus, rejected basic rights for LGBTQ+ individuals—created an unwelcoming culture for queer students at Davidson.

This photo shows Davidson College Presbyterian Church in 1987.
³

It was not only through official church policy that Christianity on Davidson’s campus contributed to the isolation of LGBTQ+ students. One undergraduate student, Dee Reynolds, wrote in the 1986 Quips and Cranks yearbook that “the shadow of the church spire reaches far,” referencing the anti-LBGT+ presence and beliefs of many Christian student groups at Davidson.⁴ Throughout the 1980s, several of these anti-LGBTQ+ groups thrived on campus, including the Catholic Campus Ministry, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and Intervarsity Campus Fellowship.⁵

A clipping from the 1986 yearbook Quips and Cranks in which Dee Reynolds writes about the prevalence of Christian culture on Davidson College’s campus.

Davidson’s culture, so influenced by these institutions and groups on its campus, oftentimes did not provide an open and accepting space for queer exploration and identity. In other interviews conducted with Davidson alumni, one encounters a culture in which high-profile administrators and church leaders in the Davidson community were not open about their sexuality, at least to the knowledge of the student population.⁶ Reflecting on the atmosphere at Davidson, McKee stated:

As far as I know, there was no support for LGBTQ students. And that’s really sad, I mean, it’s terrible, I struggled […] there were classmates that we had and dear peer folks who left Davidson. Because they couldn’t get support, and, you know, it just was such a toxic atmosphere.⁷

Queer Exploration and the Church

Stopping there, however, does not tell the full story. Scholars of queer history have recognized how churches historically have fostered queer exploration and identity, even as church teachings and procedures said otherwise. Social events, church groups, choirs, and retreats all provided the opportunity for church members to gather and spend significant time with members of the same gender.⁸ Additionally, as scholars have pointed out, church buildings, as they remained frequently unoccupied and unlocked during the weekdays, also provided the physical space to engage in queer sexual activity.⁹

In more recent decades, churches in Davidson have served as spaces that fostered queer love and identity. Such fostering was not underground—it was established by official church policy. In fact, McKee and Campbell had their service of blessing at DCPC, becoming the first lesbian couple to be married there in 2013.¹⁰ This was important to the couple due to their close ties with the Presbyterian church and the role that their faith has played in their identity formation. Indeed, McKee, who has a Master of Divinity and is an ordained elder, noted that: “when I really came out was at seminary.”¹¹ This complicates the sometimes-oversimplified notion that Christianity and queerness are intrinsically in conflict.

This photo shows the members and coach of Davidson College’s Women’s Golf Team in 1986. Jane Campbell is on the far left, and Heather McKee is on the far right.¹²

Campbell and McKee’s choice to be married in a Christian service was not only impactful for them. Sharing a memory about their friendship with an older Davidson alum, Bill Benson, Campbell recalls: “We had at our service a blessing, and as everything was getting ready, I looked out into the sanctuary and just about lost it because I was wearing my Navy service dress white uniform and, lo and behold, in was walking Bill Benson in his World War Two era service dress uniform.”¹³ She went on to explain that after Benson passed, she was approached by his children, who communicated to her that:

We firmly believe that dad got to live these extra months because you guys changed it and you guys gave him an appreciation and understanding […] Our father didn’t live a life where he would have accepted your relationship. But it was- it was you guys, […] it was two Davidson alumni, and it was a Davidson alum who served in his navy. ¹⁴

Making Space for Queerness and Christianity at Davidson

McKee and Campbell’s marriage at DCPC serves as a powerful symbol for the politics of belonging and visibility. Conducting this ceremony in the Davidson context created a public demonstration of a lesbian couple taking up religious and social space on Davidson’s campus to celebrate their love and companionship. Further, their relationship with Benson demonstrates how such visibility fosters a culture of acceptance. This speaks to the capacity for influence that Davidson could yield when making the campus and its Christian spaces safe and affirming environments for queer students to celebrate their identities openly and visibly.

Regardless, there is still much to be done to make Davidson a safe space for queer students. When asked what Davidson students and administrators could do to make it a better place, McKee and Campbell both cited the presence anti-LGBTQ+ fundamentalist Christian groups at the school as a continued barrier for queer students, emphasizing the importance of inclusive religious dialogue on campus.¹⁵

Thus, the complicated history of queerness and Christianity at Davidson continues to unfold, revealing a relationship between queerness in which Christianity, sin, and sexuality are much more nuanced than any one size fits all conception. Heather McKee and Jane Campbell’s marriage and ongoing leadership roles point to the possibilities for radical change in the politics of belonging on Davidson College’s campus and in Christian spaces more broadly, and demonstrate the importance of oral history towards more deeply understanding and potentially altering these historically-contingent relationships between sexuality and Christianity at Davidson College.

Presbyterian Heritage and Queerness

September 1, 2020 by ispadalecki@davidson.edu

I. Padalecki

“Established in 1837 by Presbyterians of North Carolina, Davidson is a liberal arts college dedicated to cultivating humane instincts and disciplined, creative minds.”¹

Official histories of Davidson College, such as the quote above, pulled directly from Davidson College’s main webpage, emphasize the college’s Presbyterian origins when discussing the goals of the institution, rooting its values within a particular faith.² Though Davidson College was founded by Presbyterians, with early leaders utilizing Presbyterian codes to define normative behavior and impose moral regulations on the town (for example, limiting the sale of alcohol), the College’s relationship with this faith has evolved.³ This relationship between Davidson College and Presbyterian moral values came into question following the intensification of the AIDS epidemic in North Carolina during the mid-to-late 1980s.⁴ During this time, heterosexual people became more aware of the queer folks in their communities, not because of a sudden recognition of the humanity of queer people, but rather because they perceived them, particularly gay men, as sexually immoral and a threat to public health.⁵ As recent as 2017, a working group tasked with reflecting on the College’s relationship with the Reformed Protestant Tradition and Presbyterianism released a report that posed the following question as one of its primary challenges: “In light of the broader climate, how can the College publicly affirm that its inclusive, humane, social-justice oriented vision is rooted in its Presbyterian heritage and identity?”⁶ The task, then, was to identify ways in which Davidson’s Presbyterian roots fostered a spirit of social justice on campus.

In this essay, we examine the intersections between Davidson’s emphasis on “humane instincts” associated with Presbyterian values and the presence (and, sometimes, lack thereof) of queer community members in the college’s official histories. In doing so, we critically interrogate the exclusions that accompany the sense of tradition and community that some groups associated with Davidson derive from Davidson’s Presbyterian identity and heritage.

Queer Organizing and FLAG

Queer students are absent from most archival documents that record the earliest histories of Davidson College. When we use the term “queer” in this essay, we mean people of sexual and gender identities diverging from the cisgender and heterosexual identities frequently deemed normative. Reflecting on the history of sexuality in the United States, students whose identities, desires, and self-definitions that might fit under the umbrella of queerness today would have used other terms, including homosexual and gay, in the past.⁷ Many words used commonly among students at schools like Davidson College were, and continue to be, pejoratives (derogatory terms) and therefore unlikely to have been recorded in official college records. Likewise, behaviors associated with queer students were often suppressed or denied by religious and educational leaders. Because of this lack of recognition of diverse expressions of gender and sexual identity by those empowered to record the histories of institutions like Davidson College, institutional archives tend not to include evidence of same-sex desire and non-normative gender expression until the late twentieth century, and this evidence often appears in student publications before institutional records. Davidson College’s archives are typical in lacking information about this topic for most of the college’s existence, but we cannot assume that these gaps prove a straight past. In fact, an anonymous Davidsonian editorial published in 1986 (seen below) suggested that gay students comprised a large minority of students.⁸ To continue challenging these archival silence, scholars researching queer histories seek out primary sources such as personal papers and memorabilia and conduct oral histories.

Some of the earliest discussions of queerness in Davidson’s archives reference to heterosexist violence and feelings of precarity experienced by queer individuals; peer pressure also helps explain archival silences. In the 1986 editorial referenced above and seen below, an anonymous gay Davidson student wrote that with “the current AIDS crisis and the accompanying cacophony of sick jokes and God’s wrath sermons…Davidson is the worst place on earth to come out.”⁹ Only five years later, in 1991, a first-year student who came out as gay was severely harrassed, even receiving death threats from fellow students.¹⁰

An anonymous article from 1986, detailing the stigma experienced by non-heterosexual Davidson students.

Although these instances indicate an increase in heterosexist violence on campus following increased queer visibility during the AIDS crisis,¹¹ this period also marked historic queer organizing among students at Davidson College. Amid the unfolding AIDS epidemic and movements for justice for people of color and women, queer students in the late twentieth century began organizing and speaking on their experiences of marginalization nationwide.¹² Students at Columbia University established the first official student organization for gay students in 1967.¹³ In 1991, students founded Friends of Lesbians and Gays, or FLAG, the first pro-queer student organization to receive a charter from SGA. Unlike any student organization before it, FLAG members worked to “ensure that [Davidson’s] campus is a safe and comfortable place for every individual, regardless of their sexual orientation.”¹⁴ Though the founding of FLAG, in many ways a direct response to heterosexist violence on campus, represents a historic moment in queer organizing among Davidson students, we must not assume that FLAG represented the beginning of queerness at Davidson. Rather, documents like the 1986 editorial prove that queer students existed at Davidson, and found each other, even before they were officially recorded as an important community population within the documentary record.

Two panels from a brochure published and distributed by members of FLAG at Davidson College.

Protestantism and the “Debate” over Queer Inclusion

Though many individuals in the local Presbyterian community were supportive towards queer students, some external community members (especially parents and alumni) who spoke out against FLAG did so citing Davidson’s Presbyterian heritage and identity.¹⁵ For example, a parent of a Davidson student expressed in a 1991 editorial published in the Davidsonian that “as a Christian I see homosexuality as a sin…some of the reasons for selecting Davidson..were its Christian heritage, honor code, and lack of such groups on campus.” This parent, among others, lamented paying their child’s student activity fee and indirectly supporting FLAG as an SGA-chartered student organization.¹⁶ In making such a statement, this parent utilized their own Christian belief, as well as Davidson’s continued association with Presbyterianism, to justify the exclusion of queer student organizations on campus.

Letters to the Editor published in the November 11, 1991 issue of *The Davidsonian*.

Additionally, in the 1994 and 1995 editions of the Davidson Journal, many alumni responded negatively to a student who called on the community to celebrate “157 years of homosexuality at Davidson” in reference to FLAG’s chartering. They pushed back against the idea that homosexuality had always existed at Davidson, citing strong Presbyterian values of the past as evidence to this end. One alum, who graduated in 1950, argued in an issue of the Davidson Journal (shown below) that “the 1950 Davidson always had a great reputation as an academic and Christian college….during my two years of required Bible courses, the 1950 Davidson taught me that homosexuality is an abomination.”¹⁷

Letter to the editors of the Davidson Journal from the Spring 1995 edition.

These alums and parents of students, among others, suggested that an embrace of or support for FLAG on Davidson’s campus represented a rift with its Christian heritage. The critics of FLAG discussed here, primarily alums and parents of Davidson College students, used their position as donors and stakeholders in the college’s reputation to mobilize anti-queer exclusion through the language of religiosity and tradition. By evoking religiosity as the primary lens through which change at Davidson should be viewed, they helped to construct a notion of community belonging that permitted and even depended on the exclusion of those who did not fit the heteronormative social codes of the Presbyterian church.

Power, Presbyterian Heritage, and Excellence in the College Archives

The social mores associated with Presbyterianism have influenced understandings of morality and normalized heteronormativity in Davidson since its founding.¹⁸Although Davidson students have not been required to attend services at the college chapel since 1963, theological discussions of various forms of Presbyterianism continued to frame discussions of homosexuality in terms of acceptance or rejection into the early twenty-first century. For example, in November 2009, a Davidson student aligned with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (distinct from the PCUSA, to which Davidson is officially affiliated) objected to a college panel on Coming Out Day by stating that “when Davidson officially encourages homosexuality by supporting events such as National Coming Out Day celebrating, it is unwittingly encouraging its students to turn against the God who made them…to live and die under his wrath and curse.”¹⁹ Other Davidson students, faculty, and staff refuted this interpretation; for example, in this same issue of the Davidsonian, another self-identified Presbyterian student stated the following: “The openness of the school…speaks volumes to the heritage of Davidson in the Presbyterian tradition…we can stand together to affirm homosexuals.”²⁰

In 2011, the Presbyterian Church (USA), through an affirmative vote of the majority of its Presbyteries, opened the ministry to partnered gay and lesbian people. (Notably, the first trans minister had served the church as early as the 1990s.)²¹In 2014, these Presbyteries voted to allow same-sex marriages at the discretion of ministers and sessions. This includes Davidson College Presbyterian Church. Anti-queer attitudes run counter to those expressed by current Presbyterian leadership in and around the college, who seek to provide safe spaces of reflection, faith, and belonging for queer students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members.²²

As historians, we recognize that archival silences often reflect intentional suppression and exclusion rather than absence. To explain why there’s no information about openly queer students, we must interrogate the heterosexist biases at the root of Davidson College’s Presbyterian identity and how this shapes descriptions of students in college histories. By examining backlash against early queer organizing at Davidson College, including the instances of parental and alumni criticism of FLAG in the early-to-mid 1990s and debate over Coming Out Day in 2009, we see examples of how Presbyterianism has been weaponized by certain community stakeholders as a gatekeeping mechanism, promoting a heteronormative ideology that extends a sense of belonging in the Davidson community only to those who do not deviate from moralized heterosexuality.

As students collect oral histories with Davidson alum for the Gender and Sexuality Oral History Project, we document the existence of gay students at least as far back as the 1960s. Their presence and contributions, which are the subjects of other essays in this project, are worthy of noting as part of the humanely oriented and Presbyterian-identified institution of Davidson College. To write the history of Davidson College as straight because it is Christian is an act of violence; it is also inaccurate.

Dancing, Deviance, and Daily Resistance

November 22, 2019 by mamcelveen@davidson.edu

M. McElveen, I. Padalecki, M. Rankins

On June 8th, 1844, Margaret White attended a “dancing party” in the town of Davidson. Although not eligible to attend Davidson College because of her gender, White was a member of Davidson Presbyterian Church and was expected to adhere to the church’s moral standards. At this time, Davidson’s college, church, and town formed one governing entity that strictly prohibited dancing.¹ The pastor of the church “admonished” White for her crime.²

black cursive ink on white page. — Davidson College Presbyterian Church Minutes from June 9th, 1844. The Church Scribe records: “Having been reported that one of our members Miss Margaret White had taken part in the exercises of a dancing party, it was agreed in session that the Pastor should confer with and admonish her in relation to that practice . . .”

Dancing in Davidson College

While often considered more liberal than other Protestant denominations today, nineteenth-century Presbyterianism entailed strict moral codes enforced through community supervision. Dancing fell into a broader category of religious rule-breaking and “worldly amusement” that also included drinking, pre-marital sex, adultery, and profanity. ³ Presbyterians perceived dancing as an impure activity that invited perverse forms of sexual pleasure, especially for women.⁴ The consequence could range from pastoral admonishment to ex-communication from the church community.⁵ In this way, the Presbyterian Church functioned as an extra-legal determinant of social mores and arbiter of corrective discipline.

Although religious institutions across the United States acted in this role, social mores were geographically and culturally situated. Just a mile north of Davidson, Iredell County Methodists viewed “shouting, weeping, falling and . . . exhibiting [religious] enthusiasm” as representative of a close relationship with God. For Methodists, such physical expressiveness in worship garnered spiritual-social power, particularly for women, while Presbyterians labeled such acts as suspect.⁶ Further, in communities with large Methodist populations, like Mooresville, residents understood physical expression as compatible with pious womanhood. Conversely, in Presbyterian towns, respectable citizens deemed these actions as expressions of feminine deviance. At this time, Davidson was deeply entrenched in Presbyterianism, a religious ideology members of this community utilized to claim moral superiority over surrounding areas. This difference in religious perceptions of social dance can perhaps be further explained by the fact that Methodists tended to be of lower economic strata, and idealized standards of white womanhood were harder for women who had to work in the fields and perform manual labor to attain. Women like Margaret White, from wealthier Presbyterian communities, had more to lose by exhibiting “scandalous” behavior; for Margaret, one dance could prevent marriage to a wealthy Davidson student, while a woman in Methodist Mooresville would not likely have had that opportunity to lose.⁷

Presbyterian moral prescriptions were not limited to women. Henry E. Fries, a Presbyterian student of Davidson College in 1876, wrote in a letter to his mother that he would no longer partake “in the dancing portion of parties” as it was a “worldly pleasure, though apparently innocent, [that] come[s] between the sinner and his God.”⁸ Religious punishment existed for both male and female Presbyterians engaging in the “worldly pleasures” of dancing. However, it was primarily when women participated in social dancing that Presbyterian leaders understood this action as inherently related to impure, illegal behaviors like extra-marital sex and fornication.⁹ This was due to the social standard of “separate spheres.” While white men engaged in the corrupt “sphere” of politics, material production, and economic development, these powerful men expected white women to exist only within a morally pure “sphere” defined by uncompensated reproductive and domestic labor.¹⁰Perhaps the association between the impurity of social dancing and the role ascribed to white women as guardians of social purity, an extension of separate spheres ideology, prompted Henry Fries to write about his moral failings to his mother, versus a male friend, father, or brother.

Letter written in cursive on faded yellow paper — Letter written by Davidson College student, Henry Fries, to his mother on April 2nd, 1876.

Agency and Fornication

White women in Presbyterian Davidson performed deviance by exercising bodily agency outside of pious, domestic womanhood (for example, attending a dancing party).¹¹ The crime of social dancing was closely aligned with legal definitions of feminine deviance. Local courts frequently accused women of fornication.¹² Fornication, used to indict women for participating in interracial or adulterous sex, was primarily leveraged against poor women of color.¹³ Like social dancing, this charge made deviant women’s claims of bodily autonomy and pursuits of sex outside of marriage. Together, legal and religious definitions of feminine deviance that focused on women’s autonomous, non-reproductive use of their bodies assumed that women were defined by their reproductive capabilities rather than their intellect. By claiming agency and pleasure for their bodies, these women were deviant. That deviance was so closely related to use of the body makes sense, given that the physical body is often seen as the site through which institutions like churches define and enforce normative social codes of behavior. For example, by deeming social dance impure, churches assert their authority in describing what is and isn’t a permissible use of one’s body.¹⁴

black and white newspaper clipping, four mentions of the word fornication are highlighted in yellow — This article from The Democrat, a Charlotte newspaper, written on Friday, January 18th, 1878, reports on local crime. On this particular date, there were four accusations of fornication recorded in the crime log.

In the case of both dancing and fornication, the legal and extralegal institutions that defined morality criminalized marginalized women who used their bodies for their own personal pleasure, rather than their husband’s.¹⁵ Because wealthy, nineteenth-century white women reproduced the white race in the South, the deviance the deviance they performed was seen as especially egregious, as their behavior directly implicated the reputations of the white fathers and husbands expected to protect them. Because white poverty was equated with immorality, the state and community institutions like churches often saw it as their legal role to extend the patriarchal authority of these protective men in places where their own authority was weak; for example, in reference to dance parties.¹⁶

Deviance and the Institution of Slavery

Under the institution of slavery, Black women also destabilized the boundaries of gender and race. Enslaved Black women participated in secret social dances that provided them with “moments of relief from black gender hierarchies as well as from slaveholding control.”¹⁷ The bodily deviance projected onto women of color includes and extends beyond fornication and dancing.¹⁸ For enslaved persons, judgment rarely, if ever, reached the courtroom. Rather, white slave-owners took matters into their own violent hands, because an enslaved person who violated the very laws that denied their humanity inherently took part in acts of resistance against the slave system.

Additionally, enslaved women engaged in everyday resistance to deprive slave owners of property and profit. These acts of rebellion ranged from feigning illness to committing arson.¹⁹ Mary Lacy, the wife of Davidson College President Drury Lacy, accused an enslaved woman, Aunt Maria, of pretending to be ill in order to avoid work. Additionally, Mary suspected bootleg parties were occurring near campus in the woods, hosted and attended by enslaved people.²⁰ Though feigning illness or sneaking away for clandestine bootleg parties might seem like relatively small acts of deviance, this demonstrates that by reclaiming time and withholding labor, enslaved women asserted agency within a racialized economic system that depended on their exploitation.²¹

By governing appropriate behavior, powerful extra-legal institutions like the Presbyterian church and the plantation collaborated with legal institutions to label certain people and actions as deviant.²² Many activities labeled deviant by patriarchal society, including dancing and fornication, reinforced the boundaries of moral, normative womanhood and served as justification for the control of women by white men. Deviant women threatened even the most powerful institutions by defying social control. Whether through claiming sexuality and agency by attending dance parties or undermining the institution of slavery, deviant women of the nineteenth-century South pushed the boundaries of their ascribed gendered and racial roles, reclaiming their bodies as their own even under profound oppression.

Women of the Ladies Missionary Society

November 22, 2019 by gmpearson@davidson.edu

T. Hagan, S. Harden, G. Pearson, with I. Padalecki

The history of Davidson College is inextricably intertwined with the Presbyterian church and the work of religious women. In the nineteenth-century South, doctrine, worship, and social circles centered around the church played a large role both in public life and the socialization of individuals. Though women of the Davidson College Presbyterian Church faced uniquely gendered expectations of their religious involvement, these women were by no means idle or powerless. Popular nineteenth-century conceptions of gender idealized social arrangements in which men and women occupied “separate spheres:” men would work for wages in trades and professions, while women would serve their families as pious and domestic moral guardians who managed the home. Religious institutions provided a unique middle-ground between public and private spheres. This is exemplified by the formation and work of the Ladies Missionary Society (formerly known as the Ladies Benevolent Society). This group of white Davidson women used their high status and membership in the local church and missionary society to leverage power in social, spiritual, and financial arenas.

Church History

In 1837, Robert Hall Morrison, a Presbyterian minister and the founding president of Davidson College, established the Davidson College Presbyterian Church. The small congregation gathered in the dining hall until the official chapel building was ready for use. In its first decades, the congregation consisted primarily of college students (who were required to attend), faculty members and their families, and some local residents. The activities of Davidson College Presbyterian Church structured life in this small town. These included Sunday morning service, Sunday school, daily morning chapel services, and Wednesday prayer meetings. Women possessed informal authority in several church-related activities; for example, they were Sunday school teachers with disciplinary powers. ¹

Ladies Missionary Society

In 1876, Lillie Helper and Mary Lafferty, the then-single daughters of prominent local families, organized a religious service organization for women called the Ladies Benevolent Society. Later, when the new church was built, the members renamed themselves as the Ladies Missionary Society. Women of the Presbyterian Church have a rich history of missionary work, and Davidson women were not unique. This tradition began as a way for American Presbyterian women to exert power outside of the domestic sphere without defying the separate spheres ideology that confined them to household labor. Missionization also served as a vehicle for the spread of Anglo-American social and economic norms. The same beliefs correlating whiteness, civilization, and Protestant Christianity that normalized Jim Crow in the South also inspired the so-called uplift of other non-white, non-Christian people in other regions of the world. ²

The constitution of the Ladies Missionary Society includes a preamble, a statement of purpose, and articles detailing how the society was to be funded, when and where to meet, and what meetings would entail. The society met monthly to read articles selected by members. Their women’s study focused on current mission work undertaken by Presbyterians. At each meeting, the president appointed a person to research a missionary field in America, Asia, and Europe or Africa. At the next meeting, the selected members presented their findings to the group. This collaborative form of self-education is notable considering that the college denied admission to female students at this time based on widely-held beliefs that higher education was not suitable for girls. It is logical to assume that these women would have utilized the small college library and sought out information from faculty, particularly because some of these men were their fathers and husbands. This tension between the college’s formal exclusion of female students and the presence of women as active learners existed until the transition to formal co-education in 1972 ³

"page 1 of the Ladies Missionary Society Constitution" — Page 1 of the Ladies Missionary Constitution

"Second page of the constitution" — Page 2 of the Ladies Missionary Society Constitution

"third page of the constitution" — Page 3 of the Ladies Missionary Society Constitution

As an organization focused on moral reform, the society Helper and Lafferty established was emblematic of other women’s missionary societies in the South. The women raised and donated money to aid missions in other countries even while many of their non-white neighbors lacked resources. To address local needs would have required these women, who were white and comparatively privileged, to acknowledge the dire economic outcomes of white supremacy in the Jim Crow South and challenge the patriarchal authority of white men in their community. They instead normalized charitable efforts directed at communities elsewhere across the globe rather than people in need in the town of Davidson and the region directly impacted by the college.4 Acknowledging the broader context is imperative to fully understanding the Ladies Missionary Society, and looking closely at specific documents from the Davidson College Church and Archives enables us to understand how white women used missionary work as a social outlet and to demonstrate their status. ⁴

Meeting Minutes

The Davidson College Archives holds a minute book that provides extensive detail on society meetings, including financial records and specific tasks done by individual members. In the 1885 minutes, four women emerge as prominent leaders: Helper and Lafferty, Mrs. Dupuy, and Mrs. Knox. It is telling that Mrs. Dupuy and Mrs. Knox are not referred to within archival materials by their first names; even in spaces of relative empowerment for women, they were defined by their legal submission to their husbands.

Helper and Lafferty established the Ladies Missionary Society, and Mrs. Dupuy and Mrs. Knox became president and vice president.⁵ All four of these women came from prominent families and married well-respected men. Lillie Helper was the daughter of Hanson P. Helper, a general store and hotel owner, and Mary Lafferty was the daughter of a deceased Presbyterian minister and Davidson College trustee. Mrs. Dupuy’s husband acted as one of the six elders in the church, and Mrs. Knox’s husband served as one of the four Deacons. ⁶ these women played an important role in the production and documentation of some church records and suggests, again their advanced literacy, familiarity with norms of shared governance, and deep engagement with Presbyterian theology.

These women became leaders, in part, because they enjoyed high socioeconomic standing that enabled them to devote time to concerns beyond their homes. Before and after the Civil War, white families benefited from Black labor. While slave schedules document this before emancipation, Jim Crow era censuses suggest the prevalence of domestic work as an occupation among Black women in predominantly white communities like Davidson. While we can’t know who worked in which home, we can logically infer that Black women performed domestic labor for their white neighbors here as they did elsewhere throughout the South. Notably, historians of Black women have emphasized that the lack of live-in Black servants in the post-war South reflects, in part, Black families’ preferences to have their own homes, families, private lives, and spaces apart from white people.⁷

"ladies missionary society meeting minutes" — Page from the Ladies Missionary Society Meeting Minutes

While white women were barred from formal power in sacred and professional settings, the unique role religion played in the lives of nineteenth-century Davidsonians enabled white women to take on leadership positions in the church while leaving the gendered and racialized hierarchies of power in their communities untouched. Through missionary societies in the Presbyterian church community, they were able to claim agency even within the marginalization they faced under the system of separate spheres; we must remember, however, that this is not the story of all women in Davidson. There are still immense gaps in the documentary record surrounding the activities and lives of women, specifically poor and Black women barred from whites-only organizations like the Ladies Missionary Society.