Robert Beech, a United Presbyterian clergyman from Minnesota, served as director of the Hattiesburg, Mississippi office of the Delta Ministry from 1964 to 1967. He was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Beech attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota and received his graduate degree from the University of Minnesota in 1957. After graduating from the McCormick Theological Seminary, he began work as a pastor at the United Presbyterian Church in Hebron, Illinois and at nearby Harvard, Illinois. When he heard that the National Council of Churches (NCC) was organizing groups of ministers to go to Mississippi to help bridge the communication gap between the African-American and white communities there, Beech signed up. Writing to a friend while at an orientation with the NCC in Oxford, Ohio, he wrote, “I feel very much at home in this movement. I know that God is leading me.”
Beech went to Mississippi in May 1964 as a volunteer for the Minister's Project. The project was organized by the NCC to bring in ministers, priests and rabbis from outside the state mainly to act as intermediaries between the African-American and white communities. Their work consisted of helping with voter registration, citizenship schools, seminars, and community service. Throughout the summer Beech worked to coordinate the efforts of other volunteers in the Hattiesburg area (also referred to as the Hattiesburg Project).
The NCC founded the Delta Ministry in September 1964 to continue the momentum brought about by the work of the ministers over the summer. It was funded by a variety of denominational church organizations from all over the world.
Beech had been effective as a volunteer during the Minister's Project, and at the end of the summer was asked by Warren McKenna, assistant director of the Delta Ministry, if he would run the newest branch office of the Ministry in the southern city of Hattiesburg. In September, Beech bought a house in Hattiesburg (no one was willing to rent to him because of his work) and moved there with his wife, Alice, and four sons.
Early on, the main goals of the Ministry were to provide immediate relief for the poorest of the state's residents. Volunteers worked to solicit donations of food, clothes and money, and to distribute these to residents who were not getting aid from the federal and state programs.
Much of the controversy surrounding the work of Beech, and of the Delta Ministry as a whole, was because Ministry staffers were from other, mostly northern, states. They were regarded as outside “agitators.” Like the other Delta Ministry offices, Beech immediately encountered resistance if not outright hostility by the white population in Hattiesburg due to his work with the Ministry. Even the church where he and his family attended service and Sunday school asked that he not attend any more when they found out he was a civil rights worker. (The church explained that they did not want to appear “liberal” by allowing his attendance at services.) He was often threatened and attacked by members of the white community. He was arrested and given jail time on several occasions, had a cross burned in his front yard, received many anonymous, threatening phone calls (some of which were documented by Alice), and had his house shot at. Some members of the white community were afraid to help him because of fear that they themselves would become the targets of reprisals from other whites.
By 1965, the Delta Ministry was expanding to include teaching adult literacy, community organization, and economic independence. Beech's work is distinguished by his ability to coordinate efforts among various organizations, supplying financial support or staff using Delta Ministry resources. He worked closely with leaders of other civil rights groups, federal agencies, church groups and ministers of other faiths. The Hattiesburg office assisted local and regional organizations such as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), chapters of the Congress of Racial Equity (CORE), the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC), and national groups like Head Start, COFO, the Poor People's Corporation (PPC), and others.
Beech left the Delta Ministry in early 1967 after they terminated him for failing to keep the office under budget (letter of termination, August 18, 1967). He taught classes in religion and sociology at Mary Holmes Junior College in West Point, Mississippi from 1967 to 1968. During his time in West Point he continued his civil rights work, serving as a board member for the National Missions. Beech left Mississippi in June of 1968, eventually moving back in Minnesota where he currently resides.
