Charles Carpenter (bishop)

Charles Colcock Jones Carpenter (September 2, 1899 – June 28, 1969) was consecrated Bishop of the Alabama Episcopal Diocese on June 24, 1938,^[1] and served until 1968. He was one of the authors of the "A Call for Unity" letter published during Martin Luther King Jr.'s incarceration in a Birmingham, Alabama, jail, asking him and his “outsider” followers to refrain from demonstrating in the streets of Birmingham.^[2]

Personal

Carpenter was born in Augusta, Georgia, and often went by C. C. J. Carpenter. He was a son of the Rev. Samuel Barstow Carpenter and his wife Ruth Berrien (Jones), née Mary Ruth Jones, daughter of Charles Colcock Jones, Jr.. He married in 1928 to Alexandra Morrison, with whom he had four children.^[3]

Ceremony at University of the South

At a special chapel service at the University of the South to celebrate Jefferson Davis' birthday, the university’s Ceremonial Mace, containing the Confederate flag, was consecrated to the memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, by Bishop Carpenter.^[4]

A Call for Unity

Carpenter was one of eight white Alabama clergymen who publicly opposed the 1963 Birmingham campaign for integration and wrote the "A Call for Unity" letter on April 12, 1963, to which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. responded with his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" on April 16, 1963.

1951 opposition to a segregated school

On July 13, 2007, a letter from Carpenter's son, the Rev. Douglas Carpenter, was published by the Episcopal Life Online Newslink emphasizing his father's stance on the issue of desegregation: "My father, C.C.J. Carpenter, was a bishop of the Alabama Diocese from 1938, when I was just turned 5, until 1968. In 1951, a parish in Mobile wanted to start a parochial school. He gave his approval only when they agreed it could be integrated. Actions such as this put him on the hit list of the White Citizens Council and the Ku Klux Klan. He got frequent hate threats by phone."^[5]

References