Memoirs of the Rev. Sallie A. Crenshaw. A Holston Conference Treasure [cover title]

[N.p., 1985. Good.. [77]pp., irregularly paginated. Original cream printed covers, bound along outer edge with long black plastic posts. Minor soiling, ex-library with some abrasions to covers from removed stickers, short closed tear to top edge. Library ink stamp on first text leaf, else internally clean. A homespun biographical celebration of a notable African-American religious leader in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Rev. Sallie Crenshaw was a United Methodist clergywoman who is described in the Foreword here as "a forerunner of the Civil Rights Movement...a fearless crusader of the oppressed...an optimistic friend to every human being...and an absolutely color-blind person." The work includes testimonials from Crenshaw's friends, but is mostly composed of short autobiographical sketches from Crenshaw's life as a Methodist domestic missionary. Crenshaw spent much of her missionary time around children of miners in Texas and West Virginia. A couple of the more interesting passages in her memoir are titled "Interracial Participation" and "Segregated Denominations." Crenshaw spent many years teaching Sunday School and running a day care center at the St. Elmo Mission of the Good Shepard Fold in Chattanooga which was eventually renamed the Sallie A. Crenshaw Day Care Center in 1983. The "Historical Review" at the end of the work provides a detailed chronological biography of Crenshaw's major accomplishments, beginning with the assertion that Crenshaw was "the first woman to receive elder's orders and full membership in the East Tennessee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church." The cover refers to Crenshaw as "A Holston Conference Treasure." The Holston Conference is an organization of nearly a thousand United Methodist churches in Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, and West Virginia comprised of a thousand clergy and about 175,000 members. OCLC records just two holdings for this delightfully amateur celebration of Crenshaw's life and work, at Emory and Tennessee Wesleyan University.