Cuninggim, Merrimon, 1911-1995

Merrimon Cuninggim (1911–1995) was a Methodist minister and university administrator. Augustus Merrimon Cuninggim was born on May 11, 1911 in Nashville, Tennessee. He died on November 1, 1995 in Cockeysville, Maryland.

Working in higher education and philanthropy, Merrimon Cuninggim gained national recognition in both fields. His early career was as a professor at various colleges and in 1951 he became Dean of the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He remained there until 1960 when he accepted the position of Executive Director/President of the Danforth Foundation in St. Louis, Missouri, where he remained until 1972. From 1973 to 1975 he worked as an advisor/consultant to the Ford Foundation and from 1976 to 1979 served as President of Salem Academy and College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. From 1979 until his death in 1995 Cuninggim served as a special consultant to both colleges and foundations on management problems. In 1981 he was one of the 16 founders of the Center for Effective Philanthropy which was formed to advise foundations and other charitable institutions on effective management.

Merrimon Cuninggim (1911–1995) served as the dean of Perkins School of Theology from 1951 until 1960. During his tenure Dean Cuninggim oversaw the purposeful integration of the student body, making Perkins the first desegregated graduate school in the American South. In the article reprint shown here, Cuninggim relayed the story in 1956, one year after the first African American ministers completed their degrees at Perkins. On April 25, 1957, he addressed the Conference on Christian Faith and Human Relations in Nashville, Tennessee. Cuninggim’s speech, “…. To Fashion as We Feel,” directly preceded Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s keynote address: “The Role of the Church in Facing the Nation’s Chief Moral Dilemma.”

The Correspondence Series, which comprises about one-half of the collection, and the Writings and Speeches Series form the bulk of the Ramsey Papers. The Correspondence Series consists chiefly of office correspondence including letters from theologians and professors, institutions and organizations, and journals, such as the Journal of Religious Ethics, for which Ramsey served as chairman of the editorial board. Among the correspondents are the American Medical Association, Roland Herbert Bainton, Emil Brunner, Daniel Callahan, James M. Gustafson, Van Austin Harvey, Orrin Hatch, the Institute of Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences, Henry M. Jackson, Journal of Religious Ethics, Ernest W. Lefever, Richard A. McCormick, Rollo May, Abraham John Muste, the National Council of the Churches of Christ, the National Council on Religion in Higher Education, The New England Journal of Medicine, H. Richard Niebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard M. Nixon, Liston Pope, Quentin L. Quade, Warren T. Reich, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Sargent Shriver, John Edwin Smith, Elton Trueblood, Richard Preston Unsworth, Henry Pitney Van Dusen, and Worldview.

Also known as Augustus Merrimon Cuninggim.