Immediately adjacent to the offices of Vanderbilt University Press is a large parking lot, part of which used to be the land where the University Church of Christ was located.
On the recommendation of Clyde Lee, perhaps the most beloved basketball player in Vanderbilt history, this is the church that Perry Wallace began attending in the weeks leading up to his first semester of classes at Vanderbilt in the fall of 1966.
In “Strong Inside,” I tell the story of how Wallace attended the church for three or four weeks before he was eventually approached by a group of men one Sunday who told him he was no longer welcome to attend – older members of the congregation said they would write the church out of their wills if Wallace, the only black person in the pews, was allowed to continue worshiping there.
Fast forward nearly a half-century. Completely out of the blue, Wallace received an email a couple of weeks ago from a professor at Abilene Christian University who said that as a Vanderbilt Divinity student in 1966, he had witnessed the eviction in what was the very first time he had attended a service at the University Church of Christ. Wendell Willis was troubled by what he saw that day, so much so that he visited Wallace’s dormitory to apologize on behalf of a church he had attended one time. Over the decades that followed, Willis occasionally thought of the ugly scene at the church, particularly as he progressed through his academic career and began teaching courses that touched on the differences between historically black and white Churches of Christ. Willis had wondered whatever became of Perry Wallace, and when an online search revealed that Wallace had become a professor himself following a successful career at the Justice Department, Willis was gratified to learn that life had turned out well for Wallace.
A day after talking to both Wallace and Willis about their reconnection, I visited Vanderbilt University Press to pick up some original photographs that will be included in Strong Inside. Walking out of the building, I looked over at the spot that used to be the University Church of Christ.
Talk about a transformation: Where an intolerant congregation once worshiped now stands a solar-powered electric vehicle charging station.