TRANSFORMED: A WHITE MISSISSIPPI PASTOR’S JOURNEY INTO CIVIL RIGHTS AND BEYOND

By William G. McAtee

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI

Reviewed by Jane Hines

In the South, people want to know where you are from.  McAtee establishes his right to tell this story from the viewpoint of a fourth-generation Mississippi native and proceeds to explore his personal and family history as it relates to the history of the state.  The story he tells covers what happened in Mississippi through slavery, Reconstruction, civil rights, marches, threats, boycotts, loyalties, murders, fear, guilt, denial, customs, lies and truths.

The narrative moves back several generations and moves forward several decades as McAtee reflects on what happened, trying to understand and to help others understand this particular story.

The central focus is Columbia, a small town in the Piney Woods of south Mississippi, where McAtee served as pastor of the Presbyterian Church from May of 1964 to October of 1966.  These were the years of turmoil surrounding the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, when “the law of the land was in direct contrast to the laws and customs of Mississippi.”

Having grown up the son of a much loved Presbyterian minister in a manse in Brookhaven, Mississippi, McAtee was uniquely prepared to “replicate pastor and church” in Columbia, only his second pastorate since graduating from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Apparently he managed to be an exemplary pastor in a volatile situation, while also serving as observer, advisor and civic leader during these troubled times.  The mayor of Columbia, Buddy McLean, was a member of the church McAtee was serving, and he is widely credited with saving Columbia from the worst of the unrest that plagued most other towns and cities in Mississippi.  McLean opened up channels of communication between whites and blacks and was open and fair in dealing with the challenging situations that arose.  McAtee was in close contact with the mayor all this time and with a group of six black and white ministers in Columbia.  They used a minister’s tools to communicate: sermons, prayers, committees, meetings and phone calls and they seem to have been helpful.

I’ve heard stories from other Presbyterian ministers who were in Mississippi at this time that involve serious threats to them and their families. But the McAtee family (Bill, Millye and two very young sons) seem to have been secure in the manse and made a peaceful exit to the Presbyterian Board of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia in the fall of 1966.

Decades later, as he reflects on his life in Mississippi after having served more than 20 years as executive in Transylvania Presbytery in eastern Kentucky, McAtee has gained in his retirement years some valuable perspectives which he shares in this book.

One of the most unusual chapters of the story involves the author’s meeting in Kentucky in 2008 with Ira Grupper, a New York Jew who was in Columbia, Mississippi, at the same time McAtee was there.  They did not know each other then, but they know each other now and TRANSFORMED includes Grupper’s point of view in a realistic way, plus the story of how they now work together to teach others.

Former Mississippi Governor William Winter wrote the foreword to TRANSFORMED in which he says: “What is most valuable about this volume is the lesson that it holds out for all of us as Americans: that only by reaching out to each other in a spirit of mutual respect and good will can we, in this racially diverse country, achieve the unity that is essential to our national well being….A book like this helps provide us with the inspiration to move on down that long tortuous road toward a final embrace of our common humanity.”

TRANSFORMED may be a memoir.  Or maybe it’s a 325-page sermon with an altar call.

Jane Hines retired as communications director of the Synod of Living Waters in 2006.