Collect Day #20 MARGUERITE (CAMPBELL) DAVIS
Almighty God, whose son Jesus when encountering the Woman at the Well, crossed over the boundaries of race and ethnicity, causing alarm among his disciples; We give you thanks for the steadfast faith of Marguerite Campbell Davis whose own family endured racist violence in New Hampshire and who also endured the whispers of suspicion even within her own faith tradition as a result of her inter-racial marriage, and she yet remained committed to its fellowship; Give us grace to abide in steadfastness and grace, in the hope that God is working God’s purposes out that we may not live either to see or enjoy, through the one who asked us to take up our cross and follow him to freedom and life, Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen
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DAY #20, March 28, 2019
NASHUA, NH
MARGUERITE (CAMPBELL) DAVIS (1916 – 1983)
Harry Purkhiser
Marguerite Campbell was born in 1916, six years after her brother, Jeffrey. Their father, Jeffrey Sr., was Black and worked as a commercial traveler. Their mother, Lillian, was White. The Campbells faced harassment, and their house was burned in an apparent act of bigotry, according to Marguerite’s niece, Jocelyn Lash.
Jeffrey Sr. “was killed in a racial incident involving an ax” in 1922, three years after the family moved to Nashua, NH.
Young Jeffrey helped steer his mother and sister to the local Universalist church. All three became active members, despite what Jeffrey recalled as suspicious whispers about him and his sister as the only Black children in the congregation. Undiscouraged, Jeffrey went on to train for the ministry at St. Lawrence University.
In 1939, Marguerite married Francis Davis, a White classmate of Jeffrey’s at St. Lawrence. Her brother officiated at the wedding. The editor of The Christian Leader published an editorial condemning mixed marriages because of the hardships they cause on the children — a thinly veiled attack on the Davis-Campbell wedding.
In a letter to The Christian Leader in 1942, John Murray Atwood, Dean of St. Lawrence University, noted that the newly ordained Rev. Francis Davis, Marguerite’s husband, still had no ministry. Because of Davis’ skills and ability, in addition to the shortage of credentialed Universalist ministers, Atwood concluded that this could only be because of the racism directed at Davis’ wife, Marguerite.
Indeed, Davis never found a ministry, and instead became a social worker. He and Marguerite ultimately divorced. Her niece described Marguerite as “the saddest woman I have ever known.”
Even so, she remained dedicated to the Universalist denomination. In the 1950s, Marguerite began work with the Universalist Christian Association, and continued to serve the denomination in the Unitarian Universalist Association. Marguerite retired from this work shortly before she died in 1983.
