Crum, Mason, b. 1887.

Mason Crum (1887-1980) served as a Professor in the Dept. of Religion at Duke University from 1930 to 1957. He studied race relations and Christianity, as well as social history of the Gullah community of the South Carolina Sea Islands.

Educator, author, Methodist minister; born Frederick Mason Crum; A.B. Wofford College, 1909; Ph.D., University of South Carolina, 1925; LI.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. Crum 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, 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. He took part in cooperative efforts in bettering race relations through education, and was active in a number of organizations. 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 Crum intended it as a course about Black life and culture. 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 Crum died in September, 1980.