Tropical Storm Doria, Part Four

The Wikipedia entry for Tropical Storm Doria doesn’t mention the desecration of the graves at the Presbyterian Church. But, strangely enough, it does report that the flooding in central Jersey forced the Alma White College in Zarephath to delay the start of its school year.

Never heard of Alma White College in Zarephath?

Me. Neither.

The Wikipedia page for Alma White College gives this description: “In June 1917 an elderly German professor came to Zarephath, the headquarters of the Pillar of Fire, and offered to teach college level classes. Several other classes were organized around a standard college curriculum.

“The college was first allowed by the New Jersey Department of Education to grant Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees in 1921 and the name Alma White College was chosen. Alma White's son, Arthur Kent White was the first president starting in 1921. Alma White was the founder of the church.”

Alma White was "noted for her association with the Ku Klux Klan, her feminism, anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, anti-pentecostalism, racism, and nativism."

“In 1923 the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey provided funding for the school, allowing it to become 'the second institution in the north avowedly run by the Ku Klux Klan to further its aims and principles.'"

(The second? What was the other one?)

Alma White said that the Klan philosophy "will sweep through the intellectual student classes as through the masses of the people." She even exhorted Princeton to adopt the Klan's philosophical stance.

“After touring the nation speaking to KKK meetings, Alma White proclaimed that ‘Princeton University will soon be vitally interested in the principles and aspirations of the order. For Princeton to try to remain indifferent to the Ku Klux Klan, if indeed it is trying to, is for Princeton to revolve, detached in its own little eddy of oblivion, while the rising tide of the greatest moral and political movement of the generation sweeps by.’” (NYT)

Princeton’s official response: “America is fundamentally sane with only occasional lapses. In Princeton, likewise, we are supposedly intelligent and so should not be influenced by the specious arguments of any grand imperial muckamuck of the Ku Klux Klan. If oblivion is destined for these who oppose the ‘invisible empire’ we will at least keep our heads above the ‘rising tide’ of tar.’” (NYT)

At that time, the Pillar of Fire was publishing the pro-KKK monthly periodical The Good

Citizen.

In 1927 the college conferred its first two Doctor of Divinity degrees. One went to Arthur Kent White, Alma's son. The other to the head of the NJ Klan, a preacher out of Jersey City.

Arthur Kent White retired as president of Alma White College in 1971. (The same year as Tropical Storm Doria...)

In 1997 and 2009, the Pillar of Fire church denounced its earlier endorsement of racism and asked for God’s forgiveness.

Sources: Wikipedia, NYTimes

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