Lina H. McCord program changed lives, former interns say
6/27/2001 News media contact: Linda Green · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn
NOTE: Photographs and a commentary, UMNS #295, are available for use with this story.
A UMNS Feature By Linda Green*
ORANGEBURG, S.C. - Twenty years ago, Teresa Martin-Major's eyes were opened, and she drew new meaning from the song "How Great Thou Art."
It was the summer of 1981, and Martin-Major, a business administration student at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Fla., embarked on a journey that would change her life. As one of the first two interns in the Black College Fund Summer Itineration Program, she spent 10 weeks interpreting and promoting the fund and the church-related historically black colleges to annual conferences in the northeast.
"I came from flatlands, and traveling on the highways I was exposed to a totally different environment," she said. "I could hear birds singing and see the beautiful woods. All of this gave new meaning to 'How Great Thou Art' because of all I had witnessed those weeks."
She was the first of a long line - 112 and counting - of what are now known as Lina H. McCord summer interns. Today, she teaches fifth-grade math and adult education in Dade County, Fla.
Martin-Major recalled those early days as she and 30 other veteran and recent Lina H. McCord interns met at United Methodist-related Claflin University. The June 22-24 reunion marked the 20th anniversary of the program.
The United Methodist Church created the Black College Fund in 1972, placing a high priority on helping its 11 historically black colleges and universities fulfill their mission through regular apportioned support. The fund supplements the schools' operational and capital needs. It originally supported 12 church-related black colleges until Morristown (Tenn.) Junior College merged with Knoxville (Tenn.) College, a Presbyterian USA-related institution, in 1989.
For Martin-Major, 40, representing her college and the church as an intern was an opportunity she could not resist. Before her involvement in the program, she had accepted an internship at an insurance company where she was guaranteed employment upon completion of college.
When she was offered the opportunity to travel on behalf of the Black College Fund, she resigned from the insurance company. "I felt that I would be able to find a job anywhere, but I might not able to receive this kind of experience and get this kind of exposure or have an opportunity to travel and represent my college in that capacity ever again," she said.
The first time Martin-Major had been away from home was when she enrolled at Bethune-Cookman College. "That was an experience by itself," she said.
During her internship, she learned about different personalities, cultures and customs, she said. "It just broadened my exposure to how people can be warm and receptive to you when you do not know what to expect and you are away from home.
"I got to see how blessed I really was. It was an education - academically, socially and spiritually," she said. "It was also financial in that it helped me stay in school another semester."
Because she was pursuing a business degree, Martin-Major was able to use her trip as a marketing project. She earned a marketing grade after convincing her professor that she sold the Black College Fund for 10 weeks.
She had initially thought about enrolling at the University of Miami, and she had already received a four-year scholarship in speech and drama. However, she soon found that the university was looking at her to fill a racial quota, she said. "I did not want to be a number, and I believed that going to Bethune-Cookman would afford me the opportunity to get an education and still be an individual."
In addition to teaching math to fifth-graders, she teaches for the adult education GED program in reading, writing and language arts.
While Bethune-Cookman gave her the traditional black college education - academic, social and spiritual - "the intern program gave me and is an education that money cannot buy," she said.
Martin-Major, who lives in Miami, also founded and is director of a dance ministry known as MASK- Minds Anointed to Serve the King -- a group of elementary, middle and senior high school students who interpret gospel songs through drama and sign language.
After she received her business education degree, she did a stint with the federal government in accounts payable. "The position was not rewarding enough for me," she said. She turned to a career in education.
"Every day, I get a raise from a hug, a smile, or I see the light turn on in a child's face when they solve a difficult problem. I'm rewarded constantly. They could not pay me enough for what I do, but the rewards are so great when my children learn and when they grasp the skills that I am teaching them."
The program is born
The intern program was the brainchild of Lina H. McCord, Black College Fund executive director from 1979 to 1985, and Paula Watson, a former staff member of United Methodist Communications. The students travel across the United States to annual conference sessions, local churches, United Methodist men's and women's groups, and youth events. They describe how the fund has changed their lives by enabling them to attend college, and they emphasize the importance of churches paying apportionments to support the fund. The students all belong to United Methodist churches.
"The idea for the intern program began after I became indignant about comments made from the floor of my first General Conference about the Black College Fund," Watson said. In 1981, she and McCord conceptualized the program, and two students - Martin-Major and Bonita McClain -- were sent into the Northeastern Jurisdiction to test the idea. The project received approval from the annual conferences and the interns. Watson said that after the students put a face on the fund, the giving increased from 67 percent of the churchwide apportionment in 1973 to 89 percent in 2000.
Between 1982 and 1986, five students -- one per jurisdiction -- itinerated for 10 weeks in what was then known as the Black College Fund Student Summer Itineration Program. It was renamed in honor of McCord when she retired in 1985.
"The Black College Fund is not about me, but about the institutions," McCord said. What is exciting, she said, is the part the students play in the effort. "When an intern tells an annual conference about their experiences, they get the truth and they get to know firsthand. The interns do more than any brochure that you can give a person," she said.
During the itinerancy, McCord said the students receive experiences that they would not normally have. "They learn how to adjust," she said. "It is a two-way street. The kids get something, and the people get to know the types of kids who attend the historically black colleges and universities of the United Methodist Church."
In addition to McCord, other executive officers of the program have been Shirley A.R. Lewis from 1986 to 1994; Ada Jackson from 1995 to 1996; and currently the Rev. Joreatha McCall Capers, who took over in 1996. Other staff included Glorianna McClain, who served as finance officer from 1974 to 1996, and current office coordinator Karen Carlton.
The former directors were honored during the 20th-anniversary reunion. By strengthening the intern program and in other ways, the directors helped put a face and personality on the Black College Fund. They also helped the church connect with the 15,000 students at the church's historically black colleges and universities.
The fund's logo is a bell, McCord said, because a bell was used to call slaves to work. Today, the bell is a symbol of calling African Americans to an education.
"When we began the intern program, we thought we had something, but we were not sure of what we had," Watson said. For a long time in the United Methodist Church, the black colleges did not seem to have churchwide ownership by people in the pews. It was not until the 1984 General Conference that Watson was struck by a change -- "when someone tall, white and thin got on the floor and talked about 'our' black colleges," she said. "And I said, 'We have it,' but never in my imagination did I imagine that the program would grow into what it is now."
A legacy and a vision
One of the key factors about the Black College Fund is that it is a church apportionment, said the Rev. Darlene Moore-James, a 1985 intern. "For me to go and speak as a living voice to groups of people made it personal and real and impacted people to say, 'This is something that my money is going toward.' It's a living testimony to what we give and how it can make a difference."
Moore-James would like to see all 65 U.S. annual conferences pay 100 percent of their apportionments to the fund, which she views as the lifeblood of the denomination's 11 historically black schools. "The black colleges and universities are still just as important today as they ever were. They are not only a legacy but they have a greater vision for the future. If the entire effort is supported, the whole church and community is rewarded."
Over the years, the Black College Fund office in Nashville, Tenn., has received inquiries about former interns and ambassadors. The reunion afforded a moment to celebrate the accomplishments made by the interns and ambassadors, Capers said.
Her office is planning a 20-year pictorial directory of the 112 interns and ambassadors to answer those "where are they now" questions. A speaker's bureau consisting of all interns is also being developed.
Capers said that the office has found that most of the 112 interns entered the ordained ministry, or became teachers or successful business people, and have made contributions to their communities, the church and the world.
Martin-Major said numerous people have told her that she is being called to ordained ministry. "I don't know. I might be running from it. I like to serve and motivate people. I like to bless someone's life. Every time I feel as if I've blessed someone, I see a blessing in my life. It is just a wonderful and spiritual cycle."
One of her goals is to pursue a career in some type of ministry, she said. "I do not know what it will be. I am waiting on the Lord to guide me on that."
Called to ministry
The itineration process helped Moore-James explore her call to ordained ministry. The Dillard University and Gammon Theological Seminary graduate is the pastor of Hartzell Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Slidell, La. The internship, the Black College Fund and Dillard University made a tremendous impact on her life during her 10-week itineration.
Moore-James grew up in the small town of Mandeville, La., and attended Newell United Methodist Church. To attend Dillard University, "you needed not only a prayer and a made-up mind but also some provisions," she said.
Her family could not afford the entire tuition, so her church family stepped in, and she learned about the Black College Fund. "The scholarship and the stipend from the intern program definitely afforded me the opportunity to finish and go to seminary," she said.
Moore-James said she knew she had received the call to ordained ministry and "this program taught me what it meant to be an advocate for something you really believed in. I found that there were not only students at Dillard who were impacted greatly by what the United Methodist Church offered through the historically black colleges and universities, but I also found out about other students at other places doing positive things."
"It taught me discipline," Martin-Major said. "Sometimes I had to hold my peace because everyone was not always nice."
For Moore-James, the key word was flexibility. "In the morning, I might have been in one state, and by the afternoon in another," she said. "It was a real rewarding experience."
As she traveled "through the cornfields of Iowa," meeting people and making a multitude of discoveries about them, "I knew that God was going to do something with my life."
Moore-James leads one of the largest congregations in the Louisiana Annual Conference. "I will never forget that it was the Black College Fund and the intern program [that] helped me to be prepared for pastoring. It was like a trial run. It was like being a circuit rider," she said.
For Martin-Major, the intern program afforded "the opportunity to see God's country in New Hampshire and Maine."
Reflecting on her itineration, she would like her 13-year-old daughter to experience the Lina H. McCord program in college.
Her most important advice to upcoming interns is "to pack light because the trip is not about you but about the Black College Fund. Take an open mind and consult God in all of your decisions and in all of the messages and talks you give. Ask God to lead and guide you because if your itineration is anything like mine was, you never know from one day to the next what you are going to encounter and experience."
One experience stands out in Martin-Major's mind today. It involved a little girl in New Hampshire who had been developing negative feelings about African Americans.
"The mother did not know where these feelings came from and specifically requested from the district superintendent that I be placed in their home," Martin-Major said. "I was welcomed into the home, and the two older daughters bonded with me very well. But, this little girl was standoffish and had little to say to me. I had been in the home about a week when she touched me and I touched her back. I guess she wanted to see what I felt like because I looked different and she wanted to see if I felt different."
Martin-Major said they soon bonded over little things, such as painting fingernails and doing hair.
Introducing Martin-Major at the annual conference session, the mother told the story of her daughter's negative feelings about black people. She told the conference about how she watched Martin-Major interact with her children, and how her impression of Martin-Major led her to give $100 to the Black College Fund. She encouraged others to do the same.
"You never know who is watching you," Martin-Major said. "From that experience, I knew that I made a difference by me being me."
For more information about the Black College Fund and the Lina H. McCord Summer Intern Program, contact the Rev. Joreatha M. Capers, Black College Fund Office, United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry, P.O. Box 340007, Nashville, TN 37203-0007; phone: (615) 340-7378; e-mail: jcapers@gbhem.org.
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*Green is news director of the Nashville, Tenn.,-based office of United Methodist News Service.
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