Elmer P. Gibson: Army Chaplain and Integration Pioneer, Pt. 1

By Matthew M. Peek, Military Collection Archivist, State Archives of North Carolina

This is Part 1 of a three-part blog post series on the life and pioneering U.S. Army service of African American Chaplain Elmer P. Gibson of Greensboro, N.C., and Philadelphia, PA. Gibson served from 1941 to 1957, and saw service in World War II and the Korean War. He was one of the major Army forces for racial integration of the U.S. Armed Forces from 1942 to 1954, and served as an advisor on racial integration to U.S. President Harry S. Truman starting around 1945. He was one of the officers who helped install the integration program at Fort Dix, NJ, in 1951. This series is dedicated to his children, Cornelia and Elmer H. Gibson, without whom this effort would not be possible.

Early Life and Education

Elmer Pettiford Gibson was born on June 24, 1903, in Greensboro, N.C., to Rev. Lewis B. and Cornelia Adeline Pettiford Gibson. Elmer Gibson’s family were descendants of slaves on the plantation of Andrew Gibson just outside of Greensboro. A slave named David was the son of Andrew Gibson and his female slave Susan (or Susa). Elmer’s father Lewis was born in 1835 into slavery; when Lewis Gibson gave birth to Elmer, he was 68 or 69 years old. Lewis Gibson became a minister at a young age in a black United Methodist Church; in 1871, he was appointed as the minister at the first black church in High Point, N.C. — High Point United Methodist Church.

MMP 9.B4.F1.2: Copy print of two separate wedding portraits of Rev. Lewis B. (right) and Cornelia Adeline Pettiford Gibson (left), the parents of Elmer P. Gibson, taken around 1888 [circa 1888].

MMP 9.B4.F1.1: Torn small board mounted wedding studio portrait of Cornelia Adeline Pettiford Gibson, wearing a dark-colored dress with a high-collared white blouse, taken around 1888 for her wedding. She was the mother of Elmer P. Gibson [circa 1888].

By 1910, the Gibson family was living in Greensboro, with Lewis having been deemed too old to serve effectively as a minister. Lewis Gibson was one of the charter trustees who helped found Bennett College in Greensboro, which had been formed in the basement of his church in 1873 as a coeducational academy for African American young people.

Elmer Gibson would feel the call to ministry like his father, and was licensed to preach at age 16 at the St. Matthews Methodist Episcopal Church in Greensboro. He would hold this position under the district superintendency of Dr. H. L. Ashe and the pastorate of Dr. R. W. Winchester. At this time, St. Matthews was recognized as the most important African American church in the state of North Carolina, with an average attendance of 600 to 800 people. Gibson attended and graduated Bennett College High School.

He would go on to attend college at Lincoln University in Oxford, Pennsylvania, a historically black university, beginning in 1922. During the summer of 1923 while at Lincoln, Gibson worked in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and joined Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church. He was admitted to the Delaware Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church from the Asbury’s Quarterly Conference. He graduated from Lincoln with an A.B. degree in 1926. In his senior year at Lincoln, Elmer Gibson came to know and be friend with Langston Hughes, already a published African Americna poet, who had come to attend Lincoln as a freshman in 1926.

Beginning of Ministerial Career

In 1926, he was assigned to his first pastorate within the communities of Chester, Grace, and Darby, Pennsylvania — suburbs on the west side of Philadelphia — where he served until 1929. Also in 1926, Gibson began serving under the Philadelphia District of the conference as a deacon at St. Daniels Methodist Episcopal Church in Chester. During this time, Gibson attended Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania [the same seminary that Martin Luther King Jr. would later attend]. Having studied theology and history of religion, Gibson graduated in 1930 with a bachelor of divinity degree, becoming the first black graduate of the seminary. During his time in the Philadelphia area, Elmer lived with his much older brother’s family. He would be ordained as an elder at Tindley Temple Methodist Church in 1928, and admitted to full membership in the Delaware Conference.

In 1929, Elmer Gibson would begin serving at Camphor Memorial Methodist Church in Philadelphia, where he remained until 1933. In 1930, Gibson received a scholarship from Crozer Seminary to attend the University of Pennsylvania. He would earn a master of arts degree in sociology in the field of race relations in 1932. In 1933, Gibson married Jeffery Melnese Wilson of Cuthbert, Georgia. Also in 1933, he was assigned to be the pastor of John Wesley Methodist Church in Salisbury, Maryland, where he remained until 1941. While at John Wesley, he represented the Salisbury District of the Delaware Conference on the conference’s Board of Education; Triers of Appeals connected with the conference’s judicial council; and served as the Dean of Young Peoples’ Work for the conference.

MMP 9.B4.F1.3: Photograph of a group of African American church members standing outside on the steps of the Sharon Baptist Church, believed to be in Baltimore, Maryland, during an unidentified conference or meeting [thought to be connected to the Methodist Delaware Conference] during the late 1930s. Pictured is Rev. Elmer P. Gibson (second row, fourth from right, holding a black binder] [1930s].

In 1940, Gibson was elected as a delegate by the Delaware Conference to the First Jurisdictional Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in St. Louis, Missouri. This Jurisdictional Conference was part of the race-based segregational organization of the merged Methodist Church in 1939, formed by the 1939 Plan of Union from the Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist Episcopal Church South and Methodist Protestant Church. This organization defined black Methodist churches as part of the Central Jurisdiction, which had been formed from 19 black annual conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church organized throughout the United States.

MMP 9.B4.F2.1: Snapshot of Rev. Elmer P. Gibson holding his infant daughter Cornelia Gibson on the front step of the family’s house in Salisbury, Maryland, in the winter in 1934–1935 [circa 1934–1935].

In 1939, 17 of the 19 black conferences voted against the merger based the instance of Southern Methodist churches to retain division based on race and not geography within the united Methodist Church. Having had the decision forced on them, attempts were made to get rid of the black Central Jurisdiction around 1940, when Gibson became involved in a wider scale in national leadership within his church. He also was elected as a second reserve delegate to the Methodist Church’s General Conference in Atlantic City in 1940, where the issue of racial division was swept under the table. It should also be noted that at the 1940 General Conference, the Methodist Church asserted that they would not officially “endorse, support, or participate in war” with the coming of World War II.

MMP 9.B4.F2.2: Snapshot of Melnese Gibson, Rev. Elmer P. Gibson’s wife, wearing a bathing suit, standing on the segregated Chicken Bone Beach in Atlantic City, New Jersey, around 1940 [it is believed the Gibsons were there while Elmer Gibson attended the Methodist Church’s General Conference in Atlantic City] [circa 1940].

MMP 9.B4.F1.7N: Copy print from a negative of a photograph of Rev. Elmer P. Gibson, wearing a dark-colored suit, kneeling down holding his toddler daughter Cornelia Gibson at the segregated Ocean City Beach, Maryland, around 1936 [circa 1936].

Check out Part 2 of this blog series on the life and service of Elmer P. Gibson, where we look at his WWII Army service through this link. You can view all of Elmer Gibson’s photographs online through the State Archives of North Carolina’s Flickr page in this album.

Resources

Elmer P. Gibson Papers, MMP 9, Miscellaneous Military Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C.

Quote on the 1940 General Conference statement on WWII taken from a quote used in the book God Bless America: Tin Pan Alley Goes to War by Kathleen E. R. Smith, Page 17.