Interview with a Researcher: Frank Crouch

Posted January 16, 2025 in General

Interview with a Researcher: Frank Crouch

This interview marks the seventh in a series where we meet with a user of the Moravian Archives to discuss their unique experience working with our collections in Bethlehem. In November 2024, we sat down with Frank Crouch to discuss his ongoing research on Moravians and racism.

Tom McCullough (TM): It is November 11, and I’m fortunate to have the Rev. Dr. Frank Crouch with me here. Frank, thank you for joining us today for an exclusive Interview with the Researcher. I think you are our seventh researcher that we’ve interviewed as part of this series. Given your service as a pastor and educator in the Moravian Church for many years, it’s really nice to hear your perspective and learn about what you’re researching. For starters, could you tell us a little bit about your research journey at the Moravian Archives? How did you learn of the Moravian Archives?

Frank Crouch (FC): I grew up Moravian in North Carolina, in the Southern Province, and I always knew there was an archive. Then when I came to seminary in Bethlehem, we did a field trip across the street to the archives. But I didn’t really spend time in the archives. And as a minister, there are records you’re supposed to keep for the archives. So I was aware of it.

I’d never used the archives for research until I was preparing for the Moses Lectures in 2016. The topic was Moravian use of Scripture. And in the course of doing that I had come across Zinzendorf and Spangenberg’s “biblical” defense of slavery, which I had missed. In all my years of being a Moravian, I wasn’t aware of that. So anyway, in doing research and reading their writings on it and secondary literature, I came across a reference to a letter that Zinzendorf wrote to government officials and plantation owners in the Caribbean in the late 1730s, explaining what they were doing. And it’s here in the Moravian Archives: a seven-page copy translated by Leonard Dober into English shortly after it was written.

Reading it was part of my coming to grips with our own history in the Moravian Church of enslaving other human beings. The gist of Zinzendorf’s argument, of his assurance to these people, was: “We’re not going to mess with your politics. We’re not going to mess with your social structure. We’re certainly not going to mess with your ability to make money. We just want to preach to enslaved people and Indigenous people of the Caribbean.” And it was like, oh, man. Because there was the evangelistic drive, but no sense of concern about the injustice of it, or at least not to that audience. Anyway, as far as I know, this is the only place where that document exists. I live a mile from here, so it wasn’t far for me to travel to the Archives. It was not only great to see that document and use it as part of the research for that lecture, but it also drove me into other areas of research.

TM: That is a compelling story. I was going to ask you about a eureka moment in the Moravian Archives, but what you just described certainly seems like one, seeing that particular letter by Zinzendorf here in person. Did you have any other similar experiences with items that you have come across?

FC: Yes. I realize there’s a number of people over the past several decades who have researched Moravians and slavery, and there’s already a lot of published work on that topic. But I realized there hasn’t been much done on post-Civil War, Moravians and race in the time of Reconstruction and Jim Crow. So I started to look at that. What I wanted to do and have since done is to research north and south. The Southern Province Archives (Winston-Salem, NC) has wonderful holdings, and the Northern Province Archives here (Bethlehem, PA), has wonderful holdings. I just wanted to see everything: all the official synods, the PECs (Provincial Elders’ Conferences), the evangelistic efforts, the ministers’ meetings, diaries, and other stuff like that. While I was doing that, getting started in that, somebody—I can’t remember who—mentioned a person named Charles Martin. He was an immigrant from the Caribbean and started a church in Harlem in 1908 and was an important figure in the early civil rights movement. So I thought “he is worth looking at.”

And you, Tom, you, in some conversation said, “Did you know that Charles Martin wrote a resolution for the Eastern District Synod in 1917?” And I said, “No, I didn’t know that.” So I came here, or perhaps this might have been during the [COVID-19] pandemic. Anyway, you sent me by e-mail a scan of the resolution from the minutes of that synod. It was about ending segregation and starting an educational program with respect to race, and the PEC’s being charged to petition government officials to create legislation and make changes. And so that was a light in a very dark history, in my opinion, of Moravians and race in America––to find that here now, which has then spurred a lot of work on Charles Martin and going through the archives.

Portrait of the Rev. Charles D. Martin as it appears in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 (New York, NY), 23 Feb. 1913

In 1917, the synod passed Martin’s resolution condemning segregation and discrimination and all that, and telling the PECs to contact the government. And so I thought, “Well, is there any record of them doing that?” So, going through all those records in the holdings, there’s no record that any follow-up was ever made on that, not from then through to the mid-1930s. There was just nothing. That was telling about the Moravian Church’s complicity in segregation. Just like they didn’t oppose slavery, they didn’t oppose segregation either, and in fact supported it. That was an unhappy eureka moment, but it was an important moment for us to come to terms with in our history.

TM: Very interesting. You mentioned earlier that you were initially doing research in 2016 for the Moses Lectures. I was wondering if—in doing that research for that particular lecture series or in your research on Charles Martin—have any other talks or presentations come out of your research findings?

FC: Yeah, so I did the Moses Lectures. I was invited in 2021 to do the Zug Lectures in Bethlehem. For those lectures, I focused on the 1910s, because from 1917 to 1919 there was just horrific racist violence in the United States. And that’s when Charles Martin was involved in the early civil rights work. So I just wanted to see, while all that was going on, all that violence, how was the Moravian Church responding? Because it was national news and local news. I also presented a paper for the Moravian University Symposium on Race, Slavery, and Land, and in that case, I pulled in the Southern Province records from Bishop Rondthaler, who was a very powerful voice in favor of segregation in the South. I’ve done stuff with the Moravian Church and the Episcopal Church, who are in full communion, and there was a webinar series on the time of enslavement, the time of Jim Crow, and then the present day. And I was part of two of those webinars. And I did an overview of Moravian history with respect to race, at the Pilgrimage for Racial Justice and Healing that the Northern Province ministers went to in Montgomery, Alabama. The archives has been a really rich resource for that, because I’m arguing from what we have in our own records, or don’t have, which is sometimes, more important.

TM: You mentioned some of the records in the different archives. Has your research taken you to any other places to consult what’s available there?

FC: Yeah. So I’ve ended up in the Board of Aldermen minutes in Winston-Salem and City Council minutes in Bethlehem. I’ve also been to North Carolina Central University in, Durham, North Carolina, where Charles Martin’s library and some of his records are preserved. And I’ve been to Chapel Hill to use the library at UNC. So it has taken me to a lot of different places.

TM: It feels like there’s a book project in this. Have you published anything about this research, or are you thinking about it?

FC: Yes. I haven’t published anything yet about it. Like I say, it’s just been the lectures. Some of those are online [see note below], but that’s of course different from publication. The goal is to publish, and I haven’t started contacting publishers, because I’ve still got research to do before I actually start writing. I’d like to do something for the church and also probably something for an academic press, because most of it is primary source research.

[note: Frank gave a keynote address to the 2023 Synod of the Moravian Church, Northern Province, which was recorded and can be viewed online at https://www.moravian.org/northern/2024/01/03/american-moravian-church-responses-to-racism-slavery-and-their-aftermaths/.]

TM: Interesting. You mentioned current research, but I was wondering, you’ve spent a lot of time in the early twentieth century previously when looking at Charles Martin: what are you up to now in the archives?

FC: So since I want to look at the whole Reconstruction and Jim Crow era, I needed to start back at the end of the Civil War. One of the things that got me started on this was reading the thirteen-volume series that came out of the Southern Province Archives called Records of the Moravians in North Carolina. The series started in 1922, and it took decades to publish. It covers 1756 to 1876. In 1866, the record shows that right after slavery had been abolished, the Moravian Church—actually it was the Salem Congregation—said, “Okay, we got these lots to sell in Salem, and we unanimously agree that we’re not going to sell any to Negroes.” And so it’s like, okay, so they just moved straight seamlessly into segregation—and that prompted me to look further back in time. I didn’t want to just start in the twentieth century, but kind of backfill: What led to or what’s the through-line from slavery and support for enslaving other people through to really strong support for segregation? So that’s what I’ve been looking at in the 1860s to early 1900s. I’d already done pretty much 1908 into the ‘40s. So now I’m catching up with the forty years in front of that.

TM: Wow, well that’s a lot of material and ground to cover.

FC: Yes, it is!

TM: You’ve said a lot about your research so far. And you’ve used the different Moravian Archives. Is there anything that you wish people that either haven’t used the archives before or are thinking about it, knew about the Moravian Archives?

FC: Well, one of the things that I didn’t realize until recently—looking at Charles Martin who was from the Moravian Church’s Eastern West Indies Province—I didn’t realize that the Eastern West Indies archival records are also here [at the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem]. And, while I’m sitting in here in the reading room, I hear people come in with genealogical questions or church history questions, congregational history questions, and so on. And this is a place, you know, it’s where all the official records are kept. To me, the archives is useful for any number of historical or genealogical projects or biblical studies. I mean, for me, that was the overlap.

TM: The research possibilities are endless, right? What about this topic inspires you to spend so much time working on it?

FC: The thing driving this for me is that a lot of people tend to think that there was a time of slavery, slavery was abolished, and then there was this slow, gradual improvement [of civil rights] over the next hundred years, you know, to bring us to today. That just skips over—I mean, the time of Jim Crow was horrific in its violence—the lynching and the mob violence of White mobs against Black neighborhoods and businesses and individuals. So that’s a piece for Moravians, and also as a country, that we need to come to terms with. Those threads haven’t disappeared by any means. There’s still great disparities and injustices going on. And it helps to understand that it’s not like all that stuff about slavery is past. A few people have said, “Why are you talking about this? You’re just stirring up trouble.” To me, it’s important, and a lot of people also want to know.

Before I started this research, I always thought that reference librarians were the most helpful class of people in the world. And now I would add people who work in archives to that class.

TM: Thanks, Frank.

FC: I mean, really, the support here and in every archive I’ve been to is just incredible. Yeah, it’s a good place to come to find the information that you’re looking for.

TM: That’s much appreciated. And you’re a great researcher to work with. We appreciate, you know, you looking up things in our online finding aid and coming to us with call numbers, certainly making it a smoother process.

FC: And having the things digitally available is another great help, because you can access them from anywhere.

TM: Well, thanks so much, Frank! It was a pleasure having you with us today. And, I hope people enjoy the interview with you and keep following your research and what comes out of it.

FC: Okay. Thanks a lot.


Enjoyed this conversation? Be sure to check out our previous interviews here: