Biography/History:

Robert Woodville Tabscott was born in 1937, the son of Robert L. Tabscott, a West Virginia state policeman, and Brenda L. Tabscott. He was raised in Mullens, Wyoming County, and Beckley, Raleigh County, West Virginia, and graduated from Mullens High School, where he was a star basketball player. He attended the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and graduated from Concord College in Athens, Mercer County, West Virginia, in 1959, with a bachelor of arts degree in political science and literature. In 1962, he received a bachelor of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, and was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS), the "Southern" Presbyterian denomination.

From 1962 to 1965, Tabscott served as minister of Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Virginia. Following this, he served as assistant minister of First Presbyterian Church in Bristol, Sullivan County, Tennessee, until 1967. That year he became minister of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Hinds County, Mississippi.

Tabscott served in Jackson during the Civil Rights Movement, and issues related to the movement led to division and controversy in the PCUS, the Mississippi Synod, the Central Mississippi Presbytery, and Covenant Presbyterian Church. Tabscott was a supporter of civil rights, publicly denouncing racism to his congregation and supporting integration of churches. Through his civil rights work, he met Rabbi Perry Nussbaum of Beth Israel Congregation, Jackson’s only synagogue. The two men remained close until Nussbaum’s death in 1987. Following the bombings of the synagogue and Nussbaum’s home in late 1967, Tabscott and Nussbaum participated in an interfaith march to protest church and temple bombings. After extensive controversy and disunity within his congregation, Tabscott left Covenant Presbyterian in 1969 and returned to Union Theological Seminary, where he studied theology and American studies and received a master of theology degree in 1970.

In 1970, Tabscott became pastor of Des Peres Presbyterian Church in Frontenac, St. Louis County, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. He served there until his retirement in 1990. In 1972, he founded the Elijah P. Lovejoy Society, named for a St. Louis-area abolitionist Presbyterian minister and newspaper editor who was killed by a pro-slavery mob in 1837. Lovejoy had at one time served as minister of Tabscott’s congregation. The Lovejoy Society aimed to promote the multicultural history and cultural diversity of Missouri and preserve and perpetuate First Amendment rights. Tabscott remained the society’s president and director until it closed in 2011 due to lack of funding. The society distributed its research library among several institutions, most notably Harris-Stowe State University, a historically black university in St. Louis.

After his retirement in 1990, Tabscott continued to disseminate sermons through a newsletter, "Tabscott Chronicles," and served as a commentator on African American history and social issues for various media outlets, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and KWMU, the St. Louis National Public Radio affiliate. He taught classes on African American history at many universities and colleges in the St. Louis area, most notably Webster University, and lectured at school districts around Missouri. Tabscott also wrote and produced several documentaries about African American history, and in 2002 helped edit a reprint of an 1838 biography of Elijah P. Lovejoy. As of 2013, Tabscott still resided in St. Louis.

 

Scope and Content:

This collection consists of four notebooks of materials related to the career of Rev. Robert W. Tabscott, primarily his service as minister of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi, from 1967 to 1969. The notebooks contain some routine items related to Tabscott’s work. Most significantly, though, they contain writings, correspondence, and other materials concerning the effects of the Civil Rights Movement on all organizational levels of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Some of the material dates as early as 1962, when controversy was already ongoing within the PCUS. Items of interest in the collection include Tabscott’s writings and correspondence about Rabbi Perry Nussbaum; bulletins from the Jackson Citizens’ Council; and a letter written by Sam H. Bowers, Jr., Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The notebooks overlap topically and chronologically; many items, such as the Citizens’ Council bulletins and many of Tabscott’s writings, can be found in photocopy form in multiple notebooks. Much of the collection discusses Tabscott’s tenure in Jackson but is of later creation and not contemporary with his time in Mississippi.

The notebook labeled "Mississippi Letters & Notes" (box 1) primarily contains materials related to Covenant Presbyterian Church and Tabscott’s management of the congregation there, including correspondence, notes, meeting minutes and reports, and financial records. Much of this material is related to the controversy within the congregation while Tabscott was minister. Also of note here is a "memorial" of complaint brought against the Central Mississippi Presbytery in 1962 by a group of ministers.

The notebook labeled "Mississippi Memoirs Black History" (box 1) primarily contains sermons, commentaries, and newsletters by Tabscott reflecting on his work in Mississippi; newspaper and journal articles; and a few photographs.

Of particular interest in the notebook labeled "Central Mississippi Presbytery" (box 2) are fifty pages of documentation of the presbytery’s response to the memorial of complaint, as well as documentation of the controversy over whether to receive African American churches into the presbytery.

Items of note in the notebook labeled "Mississippi UTS 69-70 to Present" (box 2) are the letter from Bowers and material related to an article Tabscott wrote in memory of fellow minister Isaac Crosby. Also included are a published booklet from 1964 and a typed copy of a nineteenth-century manuscript by a Presbyterian minister.

 

Box List:

Box 1

"Mississippi Letters & Notes" notebook (black), 1962-1988; n.d.
"Mississippi Memoirs Black History" notebook (green), 1964-2005; n.d.
Folder 1: Aspect, Jackson Citizens' Council bulletins (from green notebook), 1963-1964.

Box 2

"Central Mississippi Presbytery" notebook (red), 1963-2004; n.d.
"Mississippi UTS 69-70 to Present" notebook (black), 1964-2004; n.d.