Morris, John Burnett, 1930-

Executive Director for the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity; a co-editor, financial underwriter, promoter, and distributor of South Carolinians Speak, a collection of essays by respected civic leaders and active church people whom Rev. Morris recruited to write essays about desegregation and race relations.

Rev. John B. Morris was born in Brunswick, Ga.; in 1951, he graduated from Columbia University; from 1951 to 1954, he attended the Virginia Theological Seminary (Alexandria, Va.), where he earned a Bachelor's of Divinity degree. He became an ordained deacon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York , N.Y., in 1954 and an ordained priest at St. Barnabas Church in Dillon, S.C. in Mar. 1955. Morris served this parish from 1954 to 1958; during the latter part of 1958, he served as the priest-in-charge of the newly formed St. Luke's Mission in Latta, S.C.; Morris along with four other white clergymen formed a group called Concerned South Carolinians. Motivated by both their religious beliefs and their political ideals, the ministers announced that they wished to encourage citizens of their state to consider desegregation as an acceptable way of life, in an attempt to reach out to people living in small towns who might have viewed civil rights as an extremist political movement.