Joseph Reiff's guest appearances

Joseph Reiff

Freedom Loves Company

Barack Obama

Bernie Taylor

Sam Jones

Marianne Williamson

Eve Ensler

Mister Rogers

James Howard Kunstler

Barbara Brown Taylor

Jonathan Haidt

Mark Lewis

Johann Hari

Lawrence Krauss

Nick Hernandez

John Loftus

Mark Coleman

OwlTail

On September 29th, 1962, Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett spoke before a halftime crowd at a University of Mississippi football game.  He said he loved Mississippi's heritage.   This compelled him to personally block African-American James Meredith from enrolling at Ole Miss.  Eventually Meredith was enrolled, violence followed, and 28 clergy, white Methodist clergy, signed a statement, Born of Conviction, opposing the white power structure and its racism. Of the 28 signers, three lost their positions immediately, 18 had left the state in two years.   Joseph T. Reiff, chair of the Religion Department at Emory and Henry College, has written about this time, these clergy, and their statement in his book,  Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi's Closed Society.

Joseph Reiff, Born of Conviction