Melvin Blake - Scarritt College

Topic: CRS Version
There is no proof Melvin Blake is the source for “Kumbaya,” only the comment by Lynn Rohrbough mentioned in the post for 4 October 2020.  A circumstantial case can be made, but it all comes down to character and opportunity.

Blake meets the minimum requirement for the person who passed on “Kumbaya”: he was a life-long singer.  He sang in college, [1] organized a choir while he was in working in Angola, [2] and joined a men’s chorus after he retired. [3]

However, Blake’s family is not sure that he would have attended meetings where he might have heard “Come by Here,” or that it would have passed it on.  Some do not think it likely he would have taken on such a leadership role.  Others think he was not one to hide his musical talents.

That leaves it to the institutions where he may have heard or joined singing: Scarritt College during the 1951–1952 school year,  the Methodist youth conference at Purdue University in 1952, and Epworth Forest in northeastern Indiana.

The most important fact about Scarritt is that it was in Nashville, Tennessee, where a copy of “Oh, Lord, Come by Here” was published in 1934 with the melody that was modified by John Blocher after it had been corrupted in oral transmission. [4]

Walter Meader, the arranger of “Come by Here,” was active in a small Pentecostal church in the city.  As mentioned in the post for 9 May 2021, a Church of God minister reprinted Meador’s arrangement the next year in Cleveland, Tennessee, near Chattanooga. [5]  This Pentecostal denomination was begun by Robert Spurling.

Scarritt was founded by women in the Methodist Episcopal Church South to support their missionary efforts.  In the Congo, they supplied the nurses and teachers for the mission at Minga in Katanga province. [6]

During the Depression, Scarritt began thinking about the needs of rural churches.  In 1942, it opened a training center in Cumberland County, [7] mountain miles from Cleveland and Nashville, that offered short-term training programs and operated a demonstration farm. [8]  Any student could have introduced the Meador song in Crossville.

In 1942, [9] with the merger of the Northern and Southern churches, the women’s school came under control of The Methodist Church.  In 1943, a Northern man, Hugh Stuntz, was appointed president. [10]  The transition occurred during World War II, when financial contributions were smaller. [11]

Like any Northerner, Stuntz was interested in upgrading the quality of the school, within the limits of his budget.  It only had been accredited in 1940, [12] and many of its academic programs included courses at Vanderbilt University and George Peabody College for Teachers.

Stuntz closed the rural education center in 1950, and transferred the real estate to the local church conference.  The Nashville campus took over the rural mission work. [13]

In its place, he initiated the graduate program in anthropology [14] in which Blake was a student.  He took some of his classes at Vanderbilt, [15] but would have met no African Americans in them.

Tennessee’s segregation laws had become more stringent in 1942. [16]  Two Blacks had sued the state for admission to graduate programs at the University of Tennessee on the grounds the state did not provide equivalent programs for them.  The judge ruled that simply meant Tennessee had some unfulfilled obligations. [17]

This ruling complicated Scarritt’s relationships with local Black colleges.  Alice Cobb said that, while African Americans no longer could take classes, they were not completely forbidden from coming to the campus.  The school often hosted meetings of national organizations that “could not meet and find housing together for their white and black members anywhere else in the area.” [18]

Blake probably would have had no contact with these people.  He was not living in a dormitory, but in a house with his wife and family.  This, along with the time required to prepare for this classes, probably kept him at home.

The one exception may have been the social events sponsored by the church.  If the church that served the campus area had weekly fellowship meetings, he no doubt would have felt compelled to attend most weeks.  People in other places have indicated informal singing was part of the fellowship meetings they attended: Claire Lovejoy Lennon, who taught Titus “Come by Here,” sang it in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1957, [19] while a Camp Fire leader in my Michigan hometown remembered singing “Kumbaya” later. [20]

This seems the most likely place for Blake to have heard either Meador’s version of “Come by Here,” or a version that preceded or followed his.  Although it is not clear what happened to the employees of the Crossville center, some may have transferred to Nashville.  They certainly would have come to meetings, as would people from rural areas.

The Board on Missionary Education, which employed Titus, had built its headquarters building near the campus. [21]  Certainly Blake would have attended meetings, and possibly social functions there.  This would have been another place visiting Blacks or whites could have passed on “Come by Here.”

A more celebratory event would have been Rural Life Sunday.  It had begun in the 1930s under the sponsorship of the Federal Council of Churches on the fifth Sunday after Easter. [22]  That would have been May 18 in 1952.

Cobb indicated that after Stuntz closed the rural life program, the school began working with local Black churches.  She remembered:

“In the 1950s it was almost unheard of for black people and white people, especially rural people, to meet for worship services and to break bread together.  The Scarritt Rural Life Sunday, an annual affair with dinner together in the Susie Gray Dining Hall, followed by integrated workshops, was a startling innovation.” [23]

This would just have been beginning when Blake was at Scarritt, but it would have been one possible place for him to hear local Black religious music in the segregated South.

If Blake heard “Come by Here” from someone involved with rural outreach at a Scarritt College social function, it is possible Titus heard it at the same time.  Since the song would have been new to her, she may have asked Lennon about it.  This hypothetical request would have occurred after 1952, and be fresher in Lennon’s memory when she wrote to Rohrbough in 1956.

End Notes
1.  See post for 28 February 2021.
2.  See post for 7 March 2021.
3.  See post for 14 March 2021.
4.  This version is reprinted in the post for 9 May 2021.

5.  This is the Church of God associated with Robert Spurling and Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson.

6.  Christie R. House.  “Minga Hospital.”  Methodist Mission 200 website.  The Northern Methodist Episcopal Church had no parallel institution.  May Titus took her classes at the Hartford Seminary. [24]  Blake was sent to the Kennedy School for his preliminary missionary training. [25]

7.  Alice Cobb.  “Yes, Lord, I’ll Do It”: Scarritt’s Century of Christian Service.  Nashville, Tennessee: Scarritt College, 1987.  54–55.

8.  Cobb.  67.

9.  The merger became official in 1939, but took time.  Boston University has records of the Southern women’s group through 1942. [26]

10.  Cobb.  61.

11.  Albert L. Gray, Jr.  “Methodist Membership and Financial Contributions Before and After Unification.”  Methodist History 3:43–47:October 1964.  44.

12.  Cobb.  52.
13.  Cobb.  67.
14.  Cobb.  66.

15.  “African Missionary To Give Account Of Methodist Work.”  The [Greenfield, Indiana] Daily Reporter.  11 August 1952.  1.

16.  Cobb.  53.

17.  “State ex Rel. Michael v. Witham.”  Case Text website.  The case was decided by David William DeHaven on 7 November 1942.

18.  Cobb.  74.

19.  Claire M. Lennon.  Letter to Mr. Rohrbough.  19 November 1956.  WAS.  In typescript version only.  The post for 14 October 2020 has more information about this letter.

20. Lucille Parker Munk.  Interview, fall 1974.  She is profiled in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

21.  Cobb.  63.

22.  Kevin M. Lowe.  “Baptized with the Soil: Christian Agrarians and the Crusade for Rural Community, 1910-1970.”  PhD dissertation.  The Pennsylvania State University, December 2013.  104–105.

23.  Cobb.   68.
24.  For more on Titus, see post for 1 November 2020.
25.  See post for 7 March 2021.
26.  “Missions on Microfilm.”  Boston University website.