Duke University Archives. Collection description

Crum, Mason, 1887-1980 Papers, 1885-1974

Restrictions
Access to student identifiable records governed by FERPA

Organization and arrangement
Organized in 5 series: I: Correspondence, 1900-1974 + n.d.; II: Subject file, 1894-1957; III: Writings, 1911- ; IV: Photographs, 1910, 1930s + n.d.; V: Video and audio tapes, n.d.

Finding aids
Inventory in the repository

Historical/biographical note

Educator, author, Methodist minister; born Frederick Mason Crum; A.B. Wofford College, 1909; Ph.D., University of South Carolina, 1925; Ll.D, 1950. Professor of Biblical Literature, Duke University, 1930-1957. Author, Gullah: Negro Life in the Carolina Sea Islands (1940); The Negro in the Methodist Church (1950). Married (1914) Katherine Howell of Waterboro, S.C.; six children.

Mason Crum was born in Rowesville, S.C., the son of William C. and Nonie (Neeley) Crum. His father was a merchant, farmer, and landowner in Orangeburg County. Mason received his undergraduate education at Wofford College, Spartanburg, graduating in 1909. He then attended the School of Religion at Vanderbilt in 1910, and was principal of a school in Fort Mill, S.C. for a year. In 1911, desiring to work for a Ph.D in order to teach at the college level, he entered Harvard for courses in psychology and philosophy. After a year's study, dissatisfied, he returned to South Carolina and began what his autobiography calls a kind of detour in life. During the few next years, he worked as an agent for the Department of Agriculture, sold cars, and became interested in the ministry. He was ordained in the Methodist Church in 1919 and received a pastorate in Summerville, S.C. in 1920. Still desiring to teach, he was appointed Professor of Religious Education at Columbia College. From 1920 to 1930 he taught courses in Biblical literature, psychology, ethics, and education, and completed the Ph.D. program in education at the University of South Carolina, receiving the degree in 1925; his dissertation was on the Project Principle in Religious Education. He was a member and officer of the Chi Phi fraternity.

He began teaching Biblical Literature part-time at Duke University in 1930, and was appointed to the faculty two years later. While at Duke, Crum worked extensively on the question of race relations and Christianity and began studying the social history of the South Carolina Sea Islands, and especially the Gullah communities on Edisto and St. Helena's. He took part in cooperative efforts in bettering race relations through education, and was active in a number of organizations (records of these are noted in the section following this). He began teaching a course in Black History, The Negro in the Religious Life of America, in 1954; the course was described as an examination of Christian churches' attempts to apply the Christian ethic to race relations, although Dr. Crum intended it as a course about Black life and culture. Dr. Crum retired from Duke in 1957, and, after moving to Florida, he volunteered his services as a pastoral counselor to a clinic associated with the Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, Florida. He and his wife returned to North Carolina sometime after 1963, and took up residence at Lake Junaluska, the Methodist Church's retreat in western North Carolina, where Dr. Crum died in September, 1980.

The collection includes correspondence, printed material, hand- and type- written manuscripts of books and articles, clippings, photographs and glass slides, and video and audio tapes, with the bulk dates being 1931-1959. Dr. Crum acquired the materials over the course of his career as a professor of Biblical literature who had interests in black history, psychology, race relations, and recent Methodist church history. His major area of research was the Gullah communities of Edisto and St. Helena, two of the South Carolina Sea Islands, with the bulk of work here dating from the 1930s; the result of the research was "Gullah," published by Duke University Press in 1940. Other areas of interest were moral education, pastoral counseling, and religious pagentry. His concern with Christianity and race relations is shown by his participation in cooperative efforts, and in the teaching of one of the first black studies courses in the South (1954).

Series Descriptions
Series I: Correspondence, 1889-1974 + n.d., 1.3 ft. bulk dates, 1931-1959; arranged chronologically, with a sub-series, subject correspondence, 1926-1971, arranged alphabetically, and thereunder, chronologically. Consists of personal and family letters; correspondence from Dr. Crum's days as a salesman, and correspondence relating to his activities as an educator and Methodist layman. Among the last is material relating to boys' camps, Methodist Church activities, the Y.M.C.A., letters to publishers, Lake Junaluska Summer School, and Dr. Crum's other interests and activities.

The sub-series, Subject Correspondence, consists of one 5" box with material on: Camp Junaluska for Boys, 1926-1930; Chi Phi fraternity, 1948-1958; correspondence and reviews concerning the publication of "Gullah"; Lake Junaluska properties, 1949-1958; North Carolina College Teachers of Religion, 1938-1949; correspondence and reactions to his article, "A Southerner Looks at Segregation" (1954), which was published in The Christian Advocate, November 11, 1954; correspondence concerning cooperative efforts in race relations, 1936-1954. This last contains material from state, college and university, and denominational agencies concerned with bettering race relations. Among the organizations represented are the Division of Cooperation in Education and Race Relations of the North Carolina Dept. of Public Instruction, the University of North Carolina, the Dept. of Race Relations of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, and Duke University. Committee work, conferences, and other activities are represented in the file.

Series II: Subject file, 1894-1957, 1.7 ft. arranged alphabetically. Printed materials, research notes, class and financial records, a diary and cashbook, and other materials. Personal records include Dr. Crum's vitae and genealogy, a diary he kept while at Harvard, and a cashbook (1885-1895) from his father's store in Orangeburg County. Academic materials consist of class rolls, 1930- 1957, course materials, including test materials and clippings concerning his course on Black History, and several student papers. Also in the subject file are records and programs for the Lake Junaluska Assembly, research notes on various topics, including race relations and the Gullah communities, and a bibliography on Black History.

Series III: Writings, 1911-1967 + n.d., 2.5 ft., arranged alphabetically. Hand- and type-writen manuscripts, notebooks, bound volumes, together with research notes, for published and unpublished books and articles. Not included are the Guide to Religious Pagentry (published in 1923) and The Project Method in Religion (Ph.D. thesis, University of South Carolina, 1924). Works represented are: 1) Autobiography, tentatively titled The Young Bee Makes the Honeycomb, [1959-1960]. 2) A Boy's Life of Albert Schweitzer, n.d. 3) Character Building, various dates 4) Cherokee Legends of the Great Smokey Mountains, [1954-1962] 5) Child Development, writings on, various dates 6) Childhood and Character, [1929] 7) College term papers, Harvard, [1911-1912]. 8) Counseling College Students, [1930-1967]. 9) Doorways of Duke, [1950], on Duke architecture. 10) Duke University and the Things of the Spirit, n.d. 11) Family counseling, writings on, various dates. 12) Fiction, unpublished short stories, various dates. 13) Gullah. Duke University Press, 1940. Bound typesscript and personal copy. 14) History of the Southern Christian Advocate, n.d. The Advocate is a South Carolina Methodist publication. 15) Life Among the Gullah Negroes, n.d. 16) Life and Times of Washington Duke, n.d. 17) A Little Girl Named Maggie, [1953, how Maggie Valley, N.C. got its name.] 18) Miscellaneous articles 19) The Negro in the Methodist Church. The Board of Missions and the Church Extension, The Methodist Church, 1951. Bound copy inscribed to Dr. and Mrs. Gross. 20) A Negro Story Nobody Knows: When Negro Methodists sat in Southern Churches (tentative title), n.d. [on the pre-Civil War period] 21) Writings on Religion 22) A Southerner Looks at Segregation, 1955 23) Speaking of Boys, n.d. (Chapter 3) 24) The Story of Lake Junaluska, 1950, and Chief Junaluska. 25) Where Your Hillbilly Music Comes From, n.d.

Series IV: Photographs, 1910, 1930s + n.d., 2 ft., no discernible arrangement. 62 10" x 13" black and white prints, many autographed and dated by Dr. Crum, mounted on 15" x 20" boards, in two folios, and numbered; plus one box of snapshots, lantern slides, magazine clippings and small mounted prints. Most of the mounted prints date from 1935-1936, and are landscapes, portraits, buildings and activities in the Gullah communities on the islands of Edisto and St. Helena's; also photographs of charcoal portraits done in the Sea Islands by Winold Reiss of St. Helena, family prints and portraits, and prints of old maps. Most of the remaining photographs are family snapshots, scenes at Lake Junaluska, small prints of the Sea Island photographs, approximately 48 3" x 4" glass lantern slides of Sea Island prints, and scenes at Duke University (including 5" x 7" prints for an article titled 'Doorways of Duke.')

Series V: Video and audio tapes, n.d. 1-7" reel Scotch videotape, unlabeled, contents unknown; 1 7" reel audio tape, Dr. Crum performing "Cotton Field Ballads" said to be illustrative of a chapter in his autobiography on southern songs and ballads.