Guide to the Irvin Windfield Underhill Papers

Irvin Windfield Underhill, Jr., missionary, minister, and civic leader, was born in Galion, Ohio, on April 8, 1896, to Irvin Windfield Underhill, Sr., and Eva May Crawford Underhill. He grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, a poet, lost his vision when Underhill was nine and at fourteen his mother died. It was necessary for him to assist in supporting his father and two sisters. He left school and worked a variety of jobs, including newsboy, bootblack, hotel waiter, and shipyard laborer.

While working, Underhill prepared for college under private tutors. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, from 1919 to 1922, studying finance. For several years he worked as a bank cashier in Philadelphia. In 1925, at age twenty-nine, Underhill entered the ministry. He attended Lutheran Theological Seminary, Mt. Airy, Pennsylvania, from 1925 to 1926, and graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1928. While in seminary, Underhill was a member of Berean Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and preached regularly to the congregation.

In March 1928, Underhill and his fiance, Susan Theresa Reynolds (1904-1934) of Philadelphia, were appointed to the West Africa Mission by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Underhill was ordained to the ministry on June 18, by the Presbytery of Philadelphia, and married Susan Reynolds on June 30. They departed the United States for France in August, spending several months in French language study at the Alliance Francaise in Paris. In March 1929, they sailed for French Cameroun (now Cameroon), West Africa. Irvin and Susan Underhill were the first African American missionaries to the West Africa Mission.

During his eleven years of service in the mission field, from 1929 to 1940, Underhill was assigned to Foulassi, Batanga, Yaounde, Bafia, and Elat, French Cameroun. He supervised church and school work in assigned areas; established churches and schools in villages, including the first school for African Pygmies; visited the various churches and schools in his field; and held training classes for evangelists and teachers. In July 1935, he visited Dr. Albert Schweitzer at his hospital at Lambarene in French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon). In early 1937, he was made a Life Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of England for his work with the African Pygmies. In June of the same year, Lincoln University, Oxford, Pennsylvania, conferred upon Underhill the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity for his work in Africa.

Susan Underhill shared in her husband's evangelistic work. In September 1934, she became ill and died of septic poisoning following an operation for appendicitis. She was buried in the missionary cemetery in Elat. In March 1937, as a memorial to her, Underhill presented his collection of African art and anthropological artifacts to Lincoln University. In June, he was designated the official collector of African art and artifacts for Lincoln's museum. The Susan Reynolds Underhill African Collection, augmented by Underhill, became the core of Lincoln's African Art Collection.

In November 1940, Underhill returned to Philadelphia on furlough, but was unable to return to the mission field in West Africa due to World War II. He resided in the city until August 1957 and was active in civic, social, and religious service as well as political and cultural affairs. In May 1943, he married Virginia Agnes Dickerson (1915-1968) of Jersey City, New Jersey. She was a public school teacher, a trained soprano, and an active member of the Presbyterian Church. In October of the same year, she was appointed to the West Africa Mission by the Board of Foreign Missions, but never served in the mission field. The Underhills resigned from missionary service in March 1947.

Underhill was employed with the City of Philadelphia and then with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. From August 1941 to May 1951, he was the manager of the Philadelphia Housing Authority’s Richard Allen Homes, the city’s largest low-rent public housing project. A lifelong Republican, he resigned from this position to run for Philadelphia City Council member at-large on the Republican ticket. He lost the November 1951 election by a narrow margin. From January 1952 to January 1957, he was a consultant on migratory labor and housing for the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, working in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Council of Churches and the Synod of Pennsylvania.

From 1946 to 1954, Underhill was a member of the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Philadelphia, an agency directly concerned with redevelopment in the city. During his second term, he was elected treasurer and was chair of the Rehousing Advisory Committee. A member of the National Association of Housing Officials, he lectured on the subject of housing and redevelopment in the high schools, colleges, and universities in the Philadelphia area.

In addition to his work for better housing for low-income groups, Underhill was committed to the improvement of interracial relations and to equality of opportunity. He served on several committees including the Mayor’s Goodwill Committee, the Interracial Committee of the Federated Churches of Philadelphia, the Interracial Committee of the State of Pennsylvania, and the National Interracial Committee of the American Friends Service Committee. In March 1952, the chair of the Philadelphia area Eisenhower presidential campaign committee appointed Underhill to an Eisenhower interracial committee.

In his leisure time, Underhill was active in numerous civic, social service, and cultural organizations. He served on the board of directors of the Community Chest, the United Fund, the Metropolitan Y.M.C.A., the Mercy-Douglass Hospital, the Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Persons, the Health and Welfare Council of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Commission on Penal Affairs, the Pennsylvania Prison Society, the Philadelphia Conference for the Prevention and Control of Juvenile Delinquency, and the Saint John’s Settlement House. In 1951, he was one of the first two African Americans appointed to the board of directors of Philadelphia’s community-sponsored musical organization, Robin Hood Dell Concerts, Inc. Underhill was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation’s oldest black fraternity, and was a charter member and the first president of the Philadelphia chapter of The Frontiers of America, a service organization. He was also a member of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, and was kept quite busy as a freelance preacher.

While in Philadelphia, Underhill’s commitment to Africa continued. During World War II, he was a consultant on Africa to the Office of War Information and the Office of Strategic Services as well as a member of the independent Committee on Africa, the War, and Peace Aims. He was on the Board of Foreign Missions’ list of available speakers on Africa and his articles were published in the Presbyterian publications Five Continents and Drum Call. In 1951, Underhill’s essay of personal belief, colored by his experience as a missionary in West Africa, aired on Edward R. Murrow’s radio program “This I Believe.” From late 1952 to mid-1953, he was considered for the post of U.S. Ambassador to Liberia in the new Eisenhower administration.

In 1957, at age sixty-one, Underhill returned to active ministry. In July, he accepted a unanimous call to the pastorate of the First Presbyterian Church, Nunda, New York. Located forty miles south of Rochester, the village of Nunda was an all-white community. The Nunda Presbyterian Church was the first all-white Presbyterian congregation in the United States to call a black pastor. The story of this event appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper and was picked up by the news service agencies. It ran in papers across the United States and overseas. On September 1, Underhill assumed the pastorate. At his installation service, John A. Mackay (president of Princeton Theological Seminary, former secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions, and Underhill’s friend of thirty years) preached the sermon. Underhill’s pastorate of ten years was the longest in the church’s history. During his tenure, the church’s membership doubled.

Between 1957 and 1967, Underhill addressed nearly every church body within the Presbytery of the Genesee Valley as well as several other church groups throughout the country. From 1958 to 1961, he served on the General Board of the National Council of Churches as a representative of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. In May 1959, he participated in a Religious Leader’s Conference in Washington D.C. convened by the President’s Committee on Government Contracts to advance the national policy of equal job opportunity. While in Nunda, he was president of the Nunda Council of Churches, the Nunda Rotary Club, and served on the Livingston County Sheriff’s Committee on Juvenile Aid.

Following Underhill’s retirement in February 1967, the Underhills moved to Dansville, New York. In October, he accepted a call as interim pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Lima, near Dansville. While on their way to church in February 1968, their car was involved in a head-on collision. Virginia Underhill was killed. Although Irvin Underhill was critically injured, he was back in the Lima pulpit by Easter.

In August 1969, while serving as interim pastor of South Presbyterian Church, Rochester, Underhill married Ruth Estella Coffin of Nunda, an associate professor at the State University of New York College of Arts and Science at Geneseo. During the early 1970s, he served interim pastorates at Brick Presbyterian Church, Perry; First Presbyterian Church, Caledonia; and United Presbyterian Church, Lima. The Presbytery of Genesee Valley elected Underhill a commissioner to the January 1974 constituting meeting of the Synod of the Northeast. During the mid and late 1970s, he served as a guest pastor.

On July 26, 1981, at age eighty-five, Underhill preached his last sermon from the pulpit, “The World’s Greatest Homerun,” at an ecumenical communion service at the Geneseo United Methodist Church. At its Fifteenth Annual Conference in March 1982, Black Presbyterians United honored Underhill with a certificate of appreciation for his many years of service to the Presbyterian Church and its black constituents. In early June, he was named pastor emeritus of Central Presbyterian Church, Geneseo, in honor of his distinguished service to the gospel ministry.

Irvin Underhill died of cancer at his home in Geneseo, New York, on June 21, 1982.