From Preaching to Meddling: A White Minister in the Civil Rights Movement

In a fascinating memoir, retired Episcopal priest Francis X. Walter shares his journey from the days of the Great Depression in Mobile, Alabama, across decades of Deep South segregation, and into the interracial struggles for racial justice in Alabama. The founder of the Selma Inter-religious Project, Walter grew up in multiethnic, segregated Mobile and learned life lessons at theology schools in Sewanee and New York. Those disparate educations were a prelude to his years as an Episcopal priest navigating how to serve white parishes in Alabama while challenging systemic racism.

FRANCIS X. WALTER is a retired Episcopal priest from Mobile, Alabama. Walter’s dismissal as rector of an Alabama church after helping to establish an Episcopal group advancing cultural and racial unity led to his founding the Selma Inter-religious Project (SIP) shortly after the historic Selma March of 1965. He began working as one white man’s voice of conscience but later transformed SIP into a multi-pronged organization whose lawyers, organizers, and experts fought for civil rights and racial justice, advanced community development, and enabled the advocacy for poor people in the heart of Dixie.