Charles Henry Parkhurst
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Charles Henry Parkhurst (17 April 1842–1933), American clergyman and social reformer, born in Framingham, Massachusetts. Although scholarly and reserved, he preached two sermons in 1892 in which he attacked the political corruption of New York City government. Backed by the evidence he collected, his statements led to both the exposure of Tammany Hall and to subsequent social and political reforms.
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[edit] Early years
Born on an isolated farm, Parkhurst did not attend a formal school until he was twelve. Despite this, he showed a strong interest in education and graduated from Amherst in 1866. He became principal of the high school in Amherst in 1867. Parkhurst studied theology at Halle in 1869, and became a professor at the Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts, in 1870-71. After further studies in Leipzig in 1872-73, he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. He was pastor of a congregational church at Lenox, Massachusetts, from 1874 until 1880, when he was called to the Madison Square Presbyterian church, New York City (1880–1918).
[edit] Later life
Interested in municipal affairs, Parkhurst was elected president of the New York Society for the Prevention of Crime in 1891. He inaugurated a campaign against the political and social corruption of Tammany Hall. The hall had begun innocently as a social club, but had drifted into politics and graft. It acquired a lock on elections in the city, and its bosses protected crime and vice in Manhattan and surrounding boroughs. Grand jury investigations were ineffective, despite the appeals of social reformers. Few in Parkhurst's congregation recognized that Tammany Hall, the police, and organized crime were interconnected.
On February 14, 1892, he challenged Tammany Hall from the pulpit. Pointing to the hall’s political influence and their connection with the police, he noted that men fed upon the city while pretending to protect it saying,
"While we fight iniquity, they shield and patronize it; while we try to convert criminals, they manufacture them..."
When the municipal grand jury asked him for hard evidence, Parkhurst personally hired a private detective and, with his friend John Erving, went to the streets in disguise to collect proof of the corruption. From the pulpit on March 13, 1892, he preached a sermon backed with documentation and affidavits. Parkhurst’s campaign led to the appointment of the Lexow Committee to investigate conditions, and to the election of a reform mayor in 1894. Although Tammany Hall did publicly clean house, it remained influential on the both the political front and in organized crime until the 1950's. On April 17, 1932, Parkhurst again denounced the hall.
[edit] Works
Parkhurst was published in a number of magazines, and was the author of
- The Forms of the Latin Verb, Illustrated by Sanscrit (Boston, 1870
- The Blind Man's Creed, and other Sermons (New York, 1883)
- Pattern in the Mount, and other Sermons (1885)
- Our Fight with Tammany (1895 reprinted in 1970)
- My Forty Years in New York (1923).
[edit] Quotations
- "Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load."
- "All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinking."
