Date of Award

2-22-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

First Advisor

Charles Romney

Second Advisor

John Kirk

Abstract

From 1924 until 1968, the Arkansas Diocese of the Episcopal Church sponsored a private primary and secondary school in Forrest City for African American students. The school was the brainchild of the first African American ordained as a bishop in the American Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Edward T. Demby. It was the consuming passion of the school’s first headmaster, the Rev. James Henry King, who served it from its founding in 1924 until his death in 1955. This thesis considers how Christ Church School and its related parish reflect the various incarnations of African American race relations lived out in the Diocese of Arkansas from the beginning of Bishop Demby’s term as Suffragan Bishop until the present time. Framed within the Episcopal Church’s evolving and often baffling approach to race relations, the thesis investigates four periods in the life of the school and the Christ Church congregation.

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