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Nelle Morton grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. In 1925, she graduated from Flora MacDonald College in North Carolina and became a teacher. A few years later, Morton completed graduate work at the General Assembly Training School in Virginia and at the Biblical Seminary in New York City. By 1944, she had become the general secretary of the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen. Prior to assuming leadership within the Fellowship, Morton had worked closely with its founders. In this interview, she spends considerable time discussing her perception of various leaders within the Fellowship, including Howard "Buck" Kester, Thomas "Scotty" Cowan, Charles Johnson, and Reinhold Niebuhr. According to Morton, the Fellowship was founded in order to promote more radical ideas about race relations and integrations among southern churches. In explaining the goals and strategies of the Fellowship, Morton focuses on aspects of religion in the South, the Fellowship's efforts to ensure integration within their own organization, and its stance on other issues related to labor and rural people. Throughout the interview, she emphasizes the communal spirit of the Fellowship and stresses their pioneering work in integration. Particularly interesting examples she offers include her description of an integrated summer camp for children at her family's farm in Kingsport and efforts of the Fellowship to integrate places like community pools. In addition to describing the strategies, successes, and limitations of the Fellowship, Morton describes how her work with the Fellowship made her cognizant of other inequalities related to gender. She describes the challenges of being a woman leader in the Fellowship; these included the discrimination she faced during her tenure as the general secretary from 1944 to 1950. Morton later became actively involved in the women's movement and suggests here that it was her work with issues of race and labor that enabled her to recognize discrimination against, and oppression of, women.

Goal of the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen

Frank Porter Graham and the Fellowship working together

The Fellowship of Southern Churchmen and the Journey of Reconciliation

The Fellowship's position on industrialization and unionization

Efforts of the Fellowship to have integrated meetings and membership

Experiences as a woman leader in the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen

Network throughout the South and pioneering work in integration

Offering new interpretations of the Bible in the Bible Belt

Work with the women's movement rooted in experiences with the Fellowship

Successes of the Fellowship and simultaneous opposition

Realistic goals and strategies

Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection

Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews

Fellowship of Southern Churchmen

Women civil rights workers