News Briefs
Diocesan Press Service. October 7, 1964 [XXV-5]
SPECIAL FUND AIDS FAMILY
A white family driven from their native state of Mississippi because of their attempts to ease racial tensions flew to New York in early September at the invitation of Presiding Bishop Lichtenberger.
Mr. and Mrs. Albert W. Heffner and their teenage daughter Carla, ten-year residents of McComb, Miss., have been pledged national church help in setting up a new home.
The Heffners came from Jackson, Miss., where they had moved to escape two months of threats and harassment, which resulted from the visit of a white civil rights worker to their home. Over the Labor Day weekend, they moved into a Jackson apartment but within 48 hours they were asked by the landlord to leave. They then sought refuge in the apartment of a young Episcopal priest.
Mrs. Heffner, the mother of the 1963 "Miss Mississippi," Jan Nave, said she and her husband became alarmed at the "bombings and burnings" in the McComb area and wanted "to help keep down violence in the town we love."
Bishop Lichtenberger met with the Heffners, who are Episcopalians, and praised them for their courage and Christian convictions and said that "the Episcopal Church will help you in any way we can." Their visit here is being financed by the Presiding Bishop's special fund to aid those caught in situations of racial tension.
The Heffners made it clear, however, that they originally had been "champions of no cause" but were caught in what they considered to be "innocent circumstances."
Their present dilemma arises from their voluntary help in acquainting the Rev. Don McCord, a young Council of Federated Organizations worker, with McComb's law officials to help establish communication between COFO and county authorities. The Council of Federated Organizations is a confederation of civil rights groups working for better human relations in Mississippi.
McCord's visit to the Heffners' home the night of July 17 touched off a bombshell of rumors that spread throughout the community and made the family the target of after-hours telephoned threats and one alleged bombing attempt. Within two months, Mr. Heffner, 41, had been evicted from his office; his business--which had made him a member of the $2 million insurance club--had steadily dwindled; and even close friends feared to visit their modern suburban home for fear of community reprisal.
Those community pressures forced the Heffners to leave the state, where their ancestry extends back to the early 1800's. Their daughter Jan, however, will attempt to continue attending Mississippi State College for Women, where she is a junior.
KENNEDY TO FORWARD MOVEMENT
The Rev. Dr. James W. Kennedy, rector of New York's Church of the Ascension, has been named director and editor of Forward Movement Publications, a national agency in Cincinnati, Ohio, for the ministry of the written word to the members of The Episcopal Church.
The appointment, made by Presiding Bishop Lichtenberger, becomes effective Nov. 2.
The Forward Movement was initiated at the Church's 1934 General Convention in the gloom of the depression "to reinvigorate the life and to rehabilitate the work of the Church. " It is best known today for its devotional manual, "Forward Day by Day," with more than 400,000 copies distributed monthly throughout the United States and Canada. The Forward Movement also publishes a Spanish edition and an edition in braille for the blind, in addition to hundreds of other booklets covering pastoral, educational, theological and ecumenical subjects.
While rector of The Church of the Ascension, Dr. Kennedy has held numerous posts within his own church and is well-known in ecumenical circles. He currently is secretary of the Episcopal Church's Joint Commission on Ecumenical Relations, the National Council's Committee for Ecumenical Relations, and the Presiding Bishop's Advisory Committee on Anglican Relations.