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First Quaker family moves to the Carolinas
The Henry Phillips family moves to the Carolinas. They do not see other Quakers for 7 years. -
First Carolina meeting for worship is held
William Edmundson, an English Friend, holds the first religious service on record in Carolina. Six months later, George Fox, Founder of the Religious Society of Friends also visits the area and holds meetings among the colonists. -
NC Quakers are jailed for peace testimony
Nine NC Quakers (William Bundy, John Price, Jona Phelps, James Hogg, John Thusstone, Henry Prows, Richard Byer, Samuel Hill, and Steven Handcock) are fined and jailed for refusing to bear arms. -
SC Gov. John Archdale deeds land to Quakers
SC Governor John Archdale, a prominent Charleston Quaker and owner of a large section of the Grand Modell known as Archdale Square, deeds Charleston land to Quakers for a meeting house and burial ground. The original meeting house, constructed circa 1696, is destroyed to prevent the spread of fire in 1838. It is replaced in 1856 with a brick building which burns in the fire of 1861. -
North Carolina Yearly Meeting forms
North Carolina Yearly Meeting is formed. Later, when many NC Quakers move to IN, it joins with a Richmond-based yearly meeting. However, Quakers remaining in NC soon reconstitute the NC Yearly Meeting. -
Church Act ends SC Quaker influence
Friends’ involvement in and influence on SC politics come to an end with oath requirements for officeholders mandated by the Church Act of 1706. Quakers testify against the taking of oaths due to their belief, based on the teachings of Jesus, that individuals should be truthful in all matters and affirm rather than swear to an oath. -
John Woolman visits NC
Quaker abolitionist John Woolman visits NC where he witnesses slavery firsthand. He returns in 1757 to visit Quaker enslavers in the Albemarle counties of Perquimans and Pasquotan and challenge them to immediately manumit those they are enslaving. -
Two women co-found meeting in NC
Abigail Overman Pike and Rachel Wright are part of a delegation that travels on horseback to Perquimans County to request the Quarterly Meeting’s permission to establish a Monthly Meeting at Cane Creek, NC. Thereafter Abigail Pike travels extensively as a recorded minister to promote the growth of other Quaker Meetings and to represent Cane Creek at various meetings. After her husband's death in 1774, she moves from the area and joins New Garden Meeting. -
Quaker minister visits GA
Samuel Fothergill arrives in GA by way of Charleston, SC, as the first Quaker minister known to have visited the state. He reports that “there were not any there who bore our name.” -
New Garden land is purchased in NC
53 acres are purchased for “five sterling” from Richard Williams by Henry Ballinger and Thomas Hunt for the New Garden Friends Meeting and Burial Ground in 1757. In modern times the spot is marked by a stone in its northeast corner, within the boundaries of Guilford College. -
Camden Quaker burial grounds open in SC
Quaker settlers establish themselves close to the site of Camden, SC (originally known as Pine Tree Hill) about the year 1750. Quaker Samuel Wyly then conveys 4 acres of land for a period of 999 years, for a rental of "One Pepper Corn Per Year," to the Quakers for their house of worship and burying ground. -
Jeremiah Dixon surveys the Mason-Dixon line
The British Quaker Jeremiah Dixon, and his partner Charles Mason are hired by William Penn's sons to begin surveying what becomes known as the Mason-Dixon line. https://smudgyguide.net/a-crownstone-along-the-mason-dixon-line/ -
Wrightsboro, GA, is founded
In 1768, two Quakers, Joseph Mattock and Jonathan Sell, obtain 40,000 acres from the Royal Governor, Sir James Wright,.and rename the land's town Wrightsboro. By 1775 over 60 Quaker families have settled in the town and 200 in the township. During the Revolutionary War the fort here, Fort Wrightsboro, is commanded by Captain Thomas White. -
GA Quakers are banished to Savannah
When some GA Quakers refuse the oath of loyalty to the new American nation, they are banished to British-held Savannah. -
Savannah Quakers get loyalist support
Quakers taking refuge in Savannah are granted allowances of beef and rice by the royal authorities. The loyalist assembly passes an “Act for the Relief of the People Called Quakers,” granting them the right to sit in the Commons House of Assembly and to serve on juries in civil cases by taking an affirmation instead of an oath. -
"The Fighting Quaker" purchases slaves in GA
Ex-Quaker Nathanael Greene, a Revolutionary War general known as the "Fighting Quaker," moves his family to Mulberry Grove, a rice plantation on 2,000 acres given to him by GA after it was confiscated from a loyalist. He purchases slaves to operate this plantation. Nathanael Greene is not fully accepted by GA Quakers but often intercedes to protect them. -
Friendsville, TN, is founded
Friendsville, TN, is founded by Quakers moving west from New Garden, NC. The new TN town is eventually home to Friendsville Friends Meeting, a stop on the underground railroad. -
Isaac Hicks visits Savannah
Elias Hicks' and Edward Hicks' cousin, the trader Isaac Hicks, visits Savannah and admonishes his enslaver friends. -
First TN Quaker meeting is established
New Hope Friends Meeting is established in 1795. The first meeting house is a log structure. A new building is built in 1840 and is used until 1886, when a heavy snowstorm caves the roof. -
A Quaker Plan House goes up in NC
A Quaker Plan House is built in Hillsborough, NC (and can be visited today). The plan is one recommended to Quakers by William Penn: a large hall and two smaller rooms on the other side of an interior wall. The hall has a large fireplace for cooking, a stair to the upper level, built-in storage cupboards and a door opening to the outside. -
Old Quaker Road opens in GA
One of Georgia's earliest vehicular thoroughfares, Old Quaker Road, opens about 1769 to link Savannah, the colonial capital, with a Quaker settlement centering around Wrightsboro in today's upper McDuffie County. -
Lost Creek Monthly Meeting is "set off" in TN
Lost Creek Monthly Meeting is established as the second monthly meeting in Tennessee. Its cemetery graves are unmarked until much later. The meeting is still in existence in 2022. -
SC and GA Quakers begin moving to the Midwest
Quakers in South Carolina and Georgia leave to settle the slave-free territories in the Midwest. Most are gone from the South within 10 years. -
Wrightsboro, GA, meeting house is constructed
The meeting house for the Quaker town of Wrightsboro, GA, is constructed in 1799. By the 1830s it is serving as a church of another denomination. -
Future abolitionist publisher manumits slaves in TN
Elihu Embree, a PA Quaker living in Jonesborough, TN, manumits people he is enslaving. In 1819, he begins publishing the nation's first emancipation newspaper. -
TN abolitionist society only has 6 members
Quaker Chales Osborn founds an abolitionist society in Tennessee. His society only has six members. One member is the "Old Quaker," John Canaday, who teaches Davy Crocket to read. The following year Charles Osborn moves to Ohio. -
NC Manumission Society forms
On July 19, 1816, 23 delegates from four Quaker meetings organize the NC Manumission Society in Guilford County. The delegates represent 147 members in local societies. The antislavery organization alternates between meeting houses at Centre and Deep River until it disbands after 1834. Female auxiliary societies are added beginning in 1825. Members meet resistance from many quarters and have difficulty retaining printers for their handbills and other publications. -
Railroad goes through Greensboro, NC
In 1819 John Dimery becomes the first known passenger of the Underground Railroad to use the route linking Greensboro to Indiana. His escape is arranged by a Quaker, Vestal Coffin. The woods near the New Garden Friends Meetinghouse and Boarding School are a railroad station, as are Richard Mendenhall's Inn at Jamestown and Joshua Stanley's house at Centre. -
Ben Benson regains freedom in Greensboro, NC
In 1817 Benjamin Benson files suit against a Greensboro man to reclaim his freedom after having been kidnapped and sold to this man. His case is supported by Vestal Coffin, George Swain and Enoch Macy, local Quakers. In 1820 Benson is declared a free man. It is believed that he is the first African-American in the United States to use the legal system to gain freedom. -
Levi Coffin and his cousin teach reading
Levi Coffin - later to be known as the President of the Underground Railroad - and his cousin Vestal start a Sunday School in their hometown of New Garden, NC, where they teach enslaved people to read the Bible. Enslavers force the closing of the Sunday School. -
Benjamin Lundy moves to Greeneville, TN
Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lundy moves to Greeneville, TN, to continue Elihu Embree's mission of publishing abolitionist news from a Southern state (Elihu Embree has died). Benjamin Lundy's plan for gradual abolition is similar to Frances Wright's plan that informs her Nashoba Plantation community in modern-day Germantown, TN. -
Former TN governor Joseph McMinn dies
Joseph McMinn, born into a Quaker family in PA, dies after living 34 years in TN as a non-Quaker, having served as governor of Tennessee, 1815-1821, and in other state offices. At the time of his death, he is Indian Agent for the Cherokees. -
Stephen Grellet travels through TN
The French Quaker Stephen Grellet travels west to east through TN. In January 1825, he stops in Nashville, "where this evening we had a relieving meeting. My mind, in many places, is deeply tried on account of the poor slaves. The visits I pay to slaveholders gives me opportunities to plead in private, as well as in public, the cause of that suffering portion of my fellow beings." He then goes to Murfreesboro, the Cherokee seat of government. -
Levi Coffin leaves the South
Levi Coffin and his wife Catherine move to Indiana. Levi Coffin is sometimes referred to as the President of the Underground Railroad. -
New Garden Boarding School opens in NC
New Garden Boarding School is chartered in 1834. Three years later it opens as Guilford College, a coeducational college operated by the Society of Friends. -
Son of abolitionists enrolls in West Point
Born in Ohio to an abolitionist family, Bushrod Rust Johnson rejects his Quaker heritage by entering West Point. He goes on to fight in the Mexican-American War and rise to the position of General of the Confederate army (which he joins to avoid resurgence of a scandal in his previous service in the U.S. army). During the Civil War, he is injured at Shiloh and has a leadership role at Chickamauga. After the war, he lives in Nashville, where he is buried along with his wife Mary. -
Joseph John Gurney visits the South
Joseph John Gurney, leader of the Gurneyite/Evangelical Quaker movement, travels the South, including NC and GA. Regarding Savannah in 1840, he says: "We had made our arrangements for a public meeting... but our purpose was, at that time, frustrated by the sudden diffusion of a report, that I had come.. as an 'anti-slavery spy.' ...The nature of our gospel mission was explained, the report gradually subsided, and two large public meetings were held in succession." -
Birthright Quaker leaves legacy of slavery
NY Quaker, Dr. Nathan Avery, dies in the frontier town of Memphis, leaving a complex legacy of enslavement and white supremacy as well as support for women's rights. His children include the future U.S. Representative and enslaver William Thomas Avery (named after his Quaker grandfather) and Elizabeth Avery Merriwether (suffragist, Confederate author, and cofounder of the KKK in Memphis).
https://sites.google.com/site/historicbolivartn/stories-worth-remembering/elizabeth-avery-meriwether -
Richard Dillingham dies in Nashville prison
Richard Dillingham, a Quaker schoolteacher and abolitionist from OH, dies of cholera while serving three years in a Nashville prison for "Negro stealing." John Greenleaf Whittier writes the poem "The Cross" about his martyrdom. Harriet Beecher Stowe bases a character on his story. -
The "Abolition Gin" starts operation in MS
Around 1850, through the coordination of Levi Coffin and others, free-labor cotton begins to be sent from the "Abolition Gin" near Holly Springs, MS, through the river port of Memphis, TN, to Philadelphia and Free Produce Stores in the west and north. This MS cotton is superior to the NC cotton previously available in the Free Produce Stores. -
William Forster visits AL Governor
On December 15, 1853, during a series of anti-slavery meetings with American governors, British Quaker William Forster (brother-in-law of Elizabeth Fry) visits AL Governor Henry W. Collier in Montgomery. He is warmly received by the Governor, who admits to owning inherited slaves but takes no action with regard to Forster’s urgings. -
William Forster is buried in Friendsville, TN
William Forster, the Quaker abolitionist, dies while visiting Friendsville. He is buried behind the meetinghouse. -
The Penn School opens on St. Helene Island, SC
Penn School at St. Helene Island, SC, is opened by a Unitarian missionary and a Quaker missionary as the first Southern school for freedmen. Eventually it grows into a 50-acre school (with land donated by a freedman Hastings Gantt) that persists until 1948, when it becomes the Penn Center. https://www.hiltonheadmonthly.com/living/4078-penn-center-the-port-royal-experiment -
Hackneys equip Cudjo Cave in East TN
Friendsville Quaker William Hackney and his wife stock Cudjo Cave on their farm with provisions for people fleeing slavery. The cave is near a stream. Over 2,000 people stay in the cave during the war, as many as 50 at a time. Its entrance is never discovered during the war. -
Griffitts family participates in Railroad
Quaker William H. Griffitts of Loudon County, TN, is a conscientious objector. He is sent by the Confederate army to work in a KY salt mine. His wife Lucy and his teenage son manage the farm as an Underground Railroad station. Following the war, the Griffitts family helps establish the National Campground to help heal the wounds of the conflict. The campground, located near the property, is governed by an interdenominational board of Union and Confederate supporters. -
"The Southern Friend" is launched
John Bacon Crenshaw, clerk of the small Cedar Creek Meeting in VA, founds a paper, the Southern Friend, to keep the Confederacy’s Quakers informed of developments, and to appeal to the sympathies of non-Quaker readers. He advocates for imprisoned Quakers in the South. -
NC Quakers refuse to purchase exemptions
Four birthright Quakers from Randolph County, NC, refuse to purchase exemptions for Confederate service. Thomas and Amos Hinshaw and Cyrus and Nathan Barker are arrested. When they refuse to drill, they are prodded with bayonets. The four Quakers will perform no military work, including cooking, nursing, or loading fodder. They are fastened together, tied behind a cart and forced to run or be dragged. When they continue to refuse to work, they are allowed to pray in their tents. -
Levi Coffin visits freedmen in Memphis, TN
Levi Coffin writes in his reminiscences about his visits to freedman villages, where Quakers had sent "large supplies of clothing, farm-utensils, and school-books." He describes the village on President's Island - "All of the colored people here lived in tents; their church and school-house was a shelter made of brush." https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/coffin/coffin.html -
Shootout involves NC Quakers
Quaker Jesse Dobbins, other Quakers, and deserters from the Confederate army hide out in the school house behind the Deep River meeting house in NC. Confederate soldiers arrive, and there is a shootout, resulting in several deaths including a Confederate officer. Jesse Dobbins escapes into TN. After the war is over, he writes, "The rebs say that I am a traitor to my country ... because I am for a majority a-ruling and for keeping the power in the people." -
IN Quaker visits contraband camps
Elkanah Beard, an IN Quaker, chronicles his visits to contraband camps. He writes: "Am now seated alone in the City of Memphis Tenn. and enjoy the treat very much, after spending two weeks among soldiers and boatmen on the river and hundreds of contrabands by land with no rest by day and but little by night. I do not remember the time I ever was more anxious to be seated quietly alone to meditate and soliloquize with myself and draw near unto the Lord in the solemn silence of all flesh." -
The Clarks arrive in Helena, AR
Abolitionist Quakers from Indiana, Alida and Calvin Clark, arrive in Helena, AR, to open the Freedmen's Asylum for Orphans. -
AR enslaver claims he is a Quaker
Millander Hanks, from a prominent Helena family, is excused from service in the Union army based on his claim of being a Quaker (even though as late as 1860 he enslaved a family and his father enslaved 35 people). He then takes his family to IA and rents the family's home, Estevan Hall, to the Union army, later reclaiming it in 1866. From 1871 to 1873 he serves as a U.S. Congressman (Democratic Party). Estevan Hall is now being prepared to open as the Helena Civil War Tourism Center. -
Memphian, born Quaker, buys historic home
Benjamin Babb is the son of a Quaker family from Isle of Wight, VA,. He first came to TN in the 1840s. By 1864, he is a wealthy cotton merchant and banker, He purchases an elegant Memphis home (which is now known as Mallory-Neely House) from its original owners, the Kirtlands, who are Confederate sympathizers fleeing the city. -
NC "War Quakers" face derision and torture
Confederate exemptions are not allowed for what are termed "War Quakers," Quakers who became convinced after the start of the war. Ahijah Macon dies of malnutrition in prison. His brother Isaiah is sent to the front lines "to stop bullets." William T. Hales is fed bread and water for a month and then is bucked (tied onto a pole) and then returned to a bread-and-water diet. At night he is tied to a tree within rifle range of Union pickets. -
Wilmer Walton opens school in Averyville, AL
Wilmer Walton, a Quaker missionary, moves to Stevenson and Averyville as early as 1865, opening a school financed by the Quaker “Friends’ Association for Aid and Elevation of the Freedmen.” Soon, some 75 students, both adults and children, are enrolled in the school. Another teacher and Quaker missionary, Henrietta Starkweather, succeeds Wilmer Walton at Averyville. KKK violence, threats, and intimidation drive the teachers away by the early 1870s, and the school closes. -
Southland College begins outside Helena, AR
In 1866, donations of money and labor from the 56th U.S. Colored Infantry make it possible for the Friends' school to move to a 30-acre site outside of Helena, AR. The humble school eventually becomes Southland College, the first African American institution of higher education west of the Mississippi. It continues until 1925. -
IN Quakers purchase asylum barracks in MSa
IN Quakers, unable to continue using confiscated land for their orphanage in Lauderdale, MS, purchase former barracks to house the Howard Asylum for Negro Children. -
Quaker teacher in Columbus, MS, is threatened
Jonathan Wilson, one of the white Quaker teachers in Columbus, MS, receives a letter, "We, the undersigned, have determined that you shall not stay in this country, and teach a negro school; and if you do not leave, we will hang you and your whole crowd... Leave immediately. 'Your many Enemies.'" John Edwards, the formerly enslaved secretary of the Freedmen's Aid Society, writes, "...we, of the Freedmen's Aid Society, pledge our lives to you, if it comes to the issue." -
Quakers build NC model farm
Quakers build a model farm to stem westward migration by promoting improved agricultural practices. The farm is sold in 1891. -
Warnersville is established in Greensboro
Wamersville, a community for freed slaves, is established in southeast Greensboro by Yardley Warner on behalf of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The community is razed in the 1960s as part of urban renewal.
https://greensborohistory.org/exhibits/warnersville -
Columbus schoolhouse burns, classes continue
When the Columbus, MS, schoolhouse is burned down, Freedpeople and the Quaker teachers are not deterred and begin teaching classes in homes. Unfortunately all students who wish to attend classes cannot be accommodated. -
Daniel Drew is recorded as a Quaker minister
Daniel Drew of Southland Friends Meeting in AR is recorded by Indiana Friends as a Quaker minister, making him the first African American Quaker minister. Under his leadership, more than 400 African Americans in Eastern AR become Quaker. He leaves the South in 1900. -
Maryville Friends Church is built in East TN
Maryville Friends Church is built in 1871, making it the oldest brick structure still standing in its East TN county. Maryville is also the home of a Quaker-sponsored Freedman School, to which Daniel Drew travels as an evangelist. -
National Campground opens in Loudon County, TN
Quakers participate in the incorporation of the interdenominational National Campground, a place for religious revivals designed to bring together communities divided by the Civl War. -
BTW's wife is sponsored by Quakers
Margaret Murray, who will become Booker T. Washington's third wife, loses her white father when she is seven. She asks to be taken in by the Sanders, a Quaker brother and sister teaching in Macon, MS: "And so it was that Margaret Murray became at seven a permanent part of the Quaker household, and became to all intents and purposes, so far as her habits of thought and religious attitude are concerned, herself a Quaker."
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24627/24627-h/24627-h.htm -
Deep River Friends build new meeting house
The Deep River Friends Meeting in NC builds its new meeting house, still in use in 2022. The meeting itself dates back to 1753. -
Warner Institute opens in Jonesborough, TN
Yardley Warner of the Society of Friends establishes Warner Institute in Jonesborough, TN, to educate "colored persons and train colored teachers." -
Maryville school enrolls 2 Cherokee youth
Quaker school leader, Dr. J. D. Garner, enrolls two Cherokee young men in the Quaker normal school in Maryville, TN. Shortly thereafter he is appointed Superintendent of Schools for all Cherokee east of the Mississippi River. -
Cherokee enter contract with Quakers
Eastern Cherokee Chief Nimrod Jarrett Smith signs a contract with IN Quakers for the establishment and maintenance of schools to be supported by the U.S. trust fund for the NC Cherokee as well as contributions from Western Yearly Meeting and NC Yearly Meeting. The IN Quakers, led by Thomas Brown, begin work immediately, and by year-end have established schools in Cherokee, NC, and other settlements. The Chief's daughter Adaline Josephine Smith becomes a teaching aide at Yellow Hill Day School. -
Revival center opens in Mountain Home, AL
Esther and Nathan Frame, convinced Quakers who were previously Methodist, open their Mountain Home, AL, revival center, where Esther preaches. She preaches also to African Americans. -
Maryville grad becomes Indian agent
James Blythe, a graduate of the Quaker normal school in Maryville and fully bilingual in English and Cherokee, becomes the first Indian agent of Cherokee descent. His son Jarrett Blythe later becomes Chief of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee. -
Quaker Cherokee education is curtailed
Quaker Henry Spray is removed from his role as Superintendent of Schools for Eastern Cherokee midst controversy. According to oral histories, Henry Spray is not allowing Cherokee use of the Maryville school buildings for their own worship or business. -
Freedman's Institute closes in Maryville, TN
The Freedman's Institute in Maryville, TN, closes in 1901, having trained over 80 teachers. -
Institute closes in Jonesborough, TN
Warner Institute closes in 1910, when public schools open in Jonesborough, TN. -
Memphis public official identifies as Quaker
Who's Who in TN reports:
MATHEWS, Allen Grant
b. Mossy Creek, TN, 2/12/1866; son of John L. & Lucinda (Henderson) Mathews... educated Univ. of TN; began business career as a lawyer; married Allie Hudiburg 10/12/1894; member Elks, W.O.W., Past Exalted Ruler of Elks, Head Consul of Woodmen of TN; Republican; former Asst. State AG, Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal, cashier Memphis p.o.; at present Clerk U.S. Court & U.S. Commissioner; member Quaker church. -
Preparative meeting forms in Fairhope, AL
Fairhope Friends Meeting (Conservative) is formed as a Preparative Meeting under the care of Stillwater Monthly Meeting, of the Ohio Yearly Meeting, and is authorized as a Monthly Meeting in 1919. The experimental community of Fairhope was founded in 1894 by Iowans who believed in common land ownership. About half of the members of the Fairhope Monthly Meeting move in 1950 to Costa Rica in response to the draft and the growing militarism in the US. -
AFSC feeding program starts in KY
AFSC establishes a feeding program that will help thousands of Appalachian coal miners and their families as the need grows in the years ahead. AFSC also encourages miners to take up furniture making and other trades, helping to create the Mountaineer Craftsmen’s Cooperative Association. -
Thomas Elsa Jones comes to Fisk
Quaker Thomas Elsa Jones and his wife, Esther Jones, come to Nashville, TN, Tom to be President of Fisk University. Over the next 20 years he brings other Quakers to visit, including Homer and Edna Morris, Gladys and Irving Parker, Jim and Nancy St. John, Elise and Kenneth Boulding, and John and Rusty Sweitzer. Informal Quaker meetings for worship are held on Fisk campus and in Friends' homes, but not to compete with the Sunday morning Fisk Union Church service. -
Arthur Morgan becomes first head of TVA
Arthur E. Morgan, newly Quaker following his switch from Unitarianism, becomes the first head of TVA, holding that position until 1938. He brings a passion for community projects and a sensitivity to Native American land rights but also a deeply troubling belief in eugenics. The NAACP sues for his exclusion of African Americans from employment and housing opportunities, and one of his model community projects, Norris, TN, becomes a "sundown town." -
Quaker college student goes to Delta Farm
Art Landes, an OK Quaker, arrives at the Delta Cooperative Farm for a summer AFSC workcamp. There he meets and later marries fellow Quaker, Margaret Lamont from NJ. He becomes manager of the cooperative store and then postmaster in Rochdale. The couple remain in the South for several years, welcoming their oldest son David while in MS and then moving with the Southern Tenant Farmers Union to SC where their second son Donald is born. They move to Yellow Spring, OH, in 1946. -
Delta Work Camp is offered in Hillhouse, MS
According to a 1940 AFSC brochure, 20 people can be accommodated in this AFSC work camp in Mississippi close to Memphis. AFSC first began bringing young people to the Delta Co-operative Farm, based in Hillhouse, MS, in 1937. -
Soddy Work Camp is offered in East TN
AFSC's Soddy Work Camp is near Chattanooga, TN, and can accommodate 12. -
Macedonia Work Camp is offered in GA
AFSC's Macedonia Work Camp is in Appalachian GA. -
Scotts Run Work Camp is offered in WV
AFSC's Scotts Run Work Camp focuses on supporting gardening among WV miners who are experiencing economic crisis. -
Quaker teachers befriend Coretta Scott
Cecil Thomas, a Quaker working at the Lincoln School in Marion, AL, and his newlywed wife Fran, also a Quaker volunteering as the school's instrumental teacher, befriend Coretta Scott. They introduce her to Bayard Rustin, whom they bring to campus to speak on nonviolence. And they help her continue her studies at Antioch College. Later Cecil serves as AFSC's associate peace education secretary, where he maintains a friendship and working relationship with both Coretta Scott King and her husband. -
Atlanta Friends gather in GA
The Atlanta Friends Meeting traces its roots to a 6:00 supper and Meeting for Worship on February 7, 1943, at the Central YMCA in Atlanta. -
Bayard Rustin chronicles NC chain gang
Quaker Bayard Rustin plans the Journey of Reconciliation “freedom ride” which paves way for the freedom rides in the early 1960’s. After being arrested as part of this freedom ride, Bayard Rustin chronicles his experiences on a chain gang in The New York Post, which triggers an investigation that eliminates chain gangs in NC. -
Quakers visit LeMoyne-Owen
In the winter of 1948, a group of Memphis-based Quakers and Fellowship of Reconciliation participants invite Nashville Quakers, including Cecil and Fran Thomas, to join them for an event at the Memphis HBCU, LeMoyne-Owen. A newspaper announcement brings out more prospective meeting members, but sadly a Memphis Quaker meeting does not coalesce from this event. -
Fusons spark Nashville worship group
Marian and Nelson Fuson arrive in Nashville in 1949, Nelson as a Fisk Faculty member. Quaker Meeting for Worship is held in their home, usually on Saturday evenings. These meetings draw from the Vanderbilt-Scarritt-Peabody area, as well as Fisk. By the late 1950s, the group is holding a Monthly Meeting for Business, keeping minutes, and acting like a Monthly Meeting even though it is only a worship group. -
Atlanta Friends Meeting officially forms
On September 29, 1951, the Atlanta Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends officially organizes. -
West Knoxville Friends Meeting forms in TN
West Knoxville Friends Meeting forms in East TN. -
Bayard Rustin assists with Montgomery Boycott
Bayard Rustin begins assisting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in AL. -
Memphis Quaker meeting is founded in West TN
The first Memphis Quaker meeting is affiliated with Friends World Committee on Consultation (with 29 charter members including 17 adults),. One of its meeting places is the home of Marrgaret McCulloch, a white staffmember of the HBCU LeMoyne-Owen. The meeting is laid down in 1967, with just four Friends in attendance. -
Julian Bond graduates from Quaker school
Julian Bond graduates from George School in PA, a Quaker school where he absorbs the Quaker focus on equality and "speaking truth to power" and experiences racism while dating a white student. From there he enrolls at Morehouse, where he helps to found Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YVfnI872GM Pat Walker Shaw, future president of Universal Life, is at this same time enrolled at Fisk after graduating from a Quaker school, in her case Oakwood. -
AFSC sponsors King visit to India
AFSC sponsors a trip of Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King to India to meet with Gandhi's followers. -
Summer AFSC planning begins in Memphis
Memphis Friends Meeting minutes suggest that the Southern Committee of AFSC plans to hold summer workcamp programs in Memphis. However, "the question of lodging and meal planning for an interracial group in Memphis was raised, and this question will need to be answered for the AFSC to enter the scene." It appears workcamps are held in 1964 with some support from the local meeting, -
Yungbluts manage Quaker House in Atlanta
John and June Yungblut begin their 8-year stewardship of Quaker House in Atlanta, GA. While there, they grow to know Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King well. John Yungblut is a Quaker theologian and mystic. June Yungblut is a birthright Quaker born in WV, who traces her Quaker roots to the 17th Century. -
Albert Bigelow faces violence in Rock Hill, SC
The Quaker Albert Bigelow and fellow Freedom Rider John Lewis attempt to integrate a whites-only waiting room. John Lewis is struck first. Albert Bigelow steps in between him and his attackers. John Lewis later recalls, “It had to look strange to these guys to see a big, strong white man putting himself in the middle of a fistfight like this, not looking at all as if he was ready to throw a punch, but not looking frightened either." -
Fusons support Freedom Riders in TN
The Fusons are recognized as important Nashville links between white allies and those directly impacted by white supremacy and segregation. In 1961, they pick up out-of-town Freedom Riders and take them to their house, where the Freedom Riders receive training from Diane Nash and John Lewis. One Freedom Rider observes the front steps of the Fuson home, which had been destroyed by a bomb. -
MLK lectures at Quaker House in Atlanta
In 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King gives a ground-breaking interracial 10-week symposium on non-violence at Quaker House in Atlanta, GA. He also stays in the house when death threats intensify in the late 60s. -
Art Emery learns about Tent City
Quaker dairy farmer Art Emery comes to Germantown, TN, a town adjacent to Memphis, to join a protest of an U.S. Atomic Energy Commission meeting being held there. He learns about civil rights crisis in the neighboring Fayette County and the need for non-cotton agricultural development. -
Art and Carolyn Emery move to TN
Quakers Art and Carolyn Emery move to Somerville, TN, with their four children. There they host workcamp college students, and Art engages in a series of cooperatives - a bulldozer business, the West TN Organic Vegetable Produce Cooperative, and a regional fuel cooperative. -
Nashville Meeting is chartered in TN
Nashville Friends Meeting is officially chartered through the Friends World Committee on Consultation (FWCC). -
AFSC publishes MLK's Letter from Jail
AFSC published Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail." This letter becomes so popular that AFSC prints and distributes several hundred thousand copies in advance of the March on Washington, endorsed by AFSC's Board of Directors. -
Quakers participate in Fayette County actions
Art Emery is arrested on a rigged traffic charge on the day sit-ins begin in Fayette County. That same day several SNCC leaders and over 70 local African Americans are arrested. Also arrested is David Brown, who has come from Germantown Friends Meeting in PA .to be a teacher. -
MLK visits Penn Center in SC
Dr. King and his lieutenants, other luminaries of the civil rights movement and countless unnamed activists meet with the SCLC at Penn five times between 1964 and 1967. Many key speeches are written here. Quaker caretakers are Courtney and Elizabeth Siceloff. https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-civil-war/penn-center-strategic-secret-pivotal-to-civil-rights-movement.htm -
Quakers join MS Project on Churches
After 44 African American churches are firebombed, AFSC, Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting, New York Yearly Meeting, Pacific Yearly Meeting, and other Quakers (including Memphis Quakers) join the effort to rebuild the churches. Quakers are involved in rebuilding 33 churches and building a community center in Canton, MS. Some Memphis Quakers fear new churches will fragment the community or worsen segregation. Several Friends travel to MS to investigate. Ultimately Memphis continues its support. -
Art Emery fasts for peace
Art Emery, with support from Rev. James Lawson, embarks on a fast in protest to the Vietnam War. His Memphis meeting provides qualified support - "with the exceptions that he not knowingly carry the fast to the point it becomes detrimental to his health and that members of the meeting are opposed to the military involvement of all parties in the war in Vietnam as well as the United States." -
Columbia meeting in SC is founded
The meeting in Columbia, SC, represents the first Quaker meeting in the state since before the Civil War. -
Virgie Hortenstine charters TN Workcamps
Virgie Bernhardt Hortenstine charters the Fayette Haywood Workcamp organization in February of 1968 (it began working through Operation Freedom there nearly a decade before being chartered). Hortenstein works in Fayette and Haywood counties until her death in the mid-1980s, experiencing arrest at least three times. https://www.friendsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/emember/downloads/1963/HC12-50322.pdf -
Bayard Rustin organizes march in Memphis, TN
In the wake of Dr. King's assassination, Quaker Bayard Rustin joins with Coretta Scott King to organize the April 8 march in solidarity with Memphis sanitation workers. -
Quaker House opens in Fayetteville, NC
Fayetteville, NC, home of Ft. Bragg, is the chosen location for Quaker House, to support conscientious objectors. -
Memphis Quaker worship group forms
A Memphis Quaker worship group forms in the University of Memphis area, meeting in homes. -
Birmingham Preparatory Meeting forms in AL
The Birmingham Preparatory Meeting is under the care of Atlanta Monthly Meeting from 1973 to 1977. The first “official” business meeting takes place at 5:00 p.m., Sunday, September 16, 1973, at the home of Paul and Kate Franklin. -
Charleston, SC, Quaker cemetery is moved
Among those believed to be buried in the Charleston Quaker cemetery is Mary Fisher Bayley Crosse, a native of England, who was flogged at Cambridge University for her Quaker beliefs. Crosse traveled alone to the Ottoman Empire in 1660 and witnessed to Sultan Mahomet. In 1680 she settled in Charleston, SC, with her 3 children and second husband John Crosse. -
New Memphis Friends Meeting is founded in TN
The revived Memphis Quaker worship group becomes a fully-constituted monthly meeting under the care of Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting and Association (SAYMA). Charter members include the Ciscels and the McDonald-Penns. Attenders include Joanne Rhodes. -
Palmetto Friends Gathering forms in SC
Palmetto Friends Gathering forms in SC, uniting new small meetings. -
King family speaks at funeral
Coretta Scott King and her daughter Yolanda are speakers at the funeral service of the lifelong Quaker Fran Smith Thomas, who is known as "Aunt Fran" to the King children. Recordings of their words are available: https://www.manchester.edu/oaa/library/Archives_new/DigitalCollections/ThomasMemorial.htm