Advancing the Kingdom

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1952 was slowly becoming a reality.
Unfortunately, not everyone shared
Ralph Koeppe’s and his staff’s optimism
and tolerance for diversity. The only
known survey conducted on how
Kingdom House clients themselves felt
during this era was a paper written by a
Washington University student in 1967,
entitled “A Study of Attitudes Toward
and Possibilities for Integration in the
Kingdom House Area.” In her search
for explanations of white intolerance
to integration, Susan Rogers offers the
following:
...The next thing I noticed...was the
small part Kingdom House plays in the
lives of these women. This is an even more
significant finding since Kingdom House,
through which I originally contacted
them, would be even more important to
these women than to others in the area.
Undoubtedly Rulo [Joseph Rulo, Program
Director] and the rest of the staff realized
this, and this is why they bowed to pressure
and allowed segregated groups to form...
this is probably the reason behind Rulo’s
oft-repeated statement, ‘You can’t force
integration. You can only let it happen.’
These women have children who go to
school – they have problems with integration
at school; they have homes – and problems
with African Americans from the projects
who walk through the area on their way to
the market. Of the many things which affect
their daily lives, Kingdom House is only one,
and a less important one, at that (after all,
their children have to go to school). To push
integration at Kingdom House before the
people are prepared for it would probably be
only to end their participation at Kingdom
House, and thus any slight chances Kingdom
House has of affecting their prejudices. In
fact, this is what had apparently happened
to some extent already. After talking with
Mrs. A., I wrote:
Apparently, until this group {footnoted:
the Monday-Thursday Social Club,
which took over what was formerly
the Kingdom House drop-in lounge,
and which only admits teenagers ‘from
the area,’ that is, white teenagers, as
there are only three African American
teenagers in the area, all of whom,
according to Mrs. C., have jobs and
would not be interested} was started,
none of her kids had gone to Kingdom
House for several years. The younger
ones still don’t, except with Mrs. A. as
she chaperones. She asked ____ [her
nine-year old son] why he didn’t go to
Kingdom House after school, but he
didn’t answer. The kids wouldn’t go
before, she said, even when there were
white groups, because there were so
many African American groups going on
at the same time.
Mrs. B. was equally as explicit:
She said that almost everyone in this
area went to Kingdom House at some
time, but that they don’t now because of
the African American.
It is sheer folly to think that there is
anything which can be done at Kingdom
House that will significantly affect the racial
attitudes of any great number of people,
especially in the short run.
...when talking about the Monday-
Thursday Club, which both Mrs. A. and Mrs.
B. help chaperone, both explained to me, in
almost the same words, that:
The group is limited to kids from ‘this
area’– there are a few African American
families who would be ‘welcome if they
wanted to come’– but not to people from
the projects.
Kids from the projects aren’t allowed
because ‘mothers from this area are
doing the chaperoning—so why
shouldn’t it just be for kids from this
area?’
...Not only are there problems at school
and at Kingdom House: there are problems
at home too. Kids from the projects walk
through the area to get to the market,
so there is constant contact with them. I
talked to Mrs. B. just after the kids had
had a week’s vacation from school, and
her nineteen year old daughter had been
chased and hit with a brick by six to eight
African American boys on the way to the
store a half block away...
...The attitude of the girls towards
the Kingdom House staff worker
for Saturday afternoons, an African
American, is interesting. They all seem
to like him, but it is very possible that
somehow they do not think of him as
an African American. One girl, about
10 years old, drew a picture of him last
Saturday, leaving his face completely
white. It is conceivable that in his role
as a staff worker, he may have lost his
identification as an African American in
their minds...
The question now, whether or not we
do accept that their prejudice and fear
extends to African Americans in general,
is precisely what the basis of that fear is.
The various reasons listed above may all
be relevant, but I feel the primary fears are
those of physical danger and of sex and
inter-marriage. That they fear physical
danger, primarily for their children, is
evident in the many comments made
above about why the children never go to
Kingdom House any more, and about the
African Americans’ walking through the
area. Too, after talking with Mrs. A. about
a new multi-service center like Wohl center
on Kingshighway....
She hopes they don’t build it, because
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Chapter Three: ‘Suffer the Children…’ (1956 – 1977)
It is sheer folly to
think that there is
anything which can
be done at Kingdom
House that will
significantly affect
the racial attitudes
of any great number
of people, especially in
the short run.