Dr. Charles Lawrence II and Dr. Margaret Lawrence. Papers

Charles Radford Lawrence II was a longtime Church leader, social activist, and educator. From 1948 until his retirement in 1977, he worked at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York as professor of sociology and chairman of the Department of Sociology. His active involvement in the Church began in 1952 when he became the vestryman and senior warden for Saint Paul's in Spring Valley, New York. Sixteen years later, he became the first black senior warden for New York's historic Trinity Parish.

Lawrence served as a Deputy to General Convention from 1967 to 1985, attending eight conventions. In 1976, he became the first African American, and third lay person, elected President of the House of Deputies. Two of the most controversial changes in the Church in the 20th century, the ordination of women and the adoption of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, occurred during his presidency.

Throughout his work for the Church, Lawrence served on several committees, commissions, and boards. In 1973, he served as chairman of the House of Deputies' Special Committee on the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood and Episcopate. In 1976, he was the co-chairman of the Executive Council’s Special Advisory Committee on Church in Society. Additionally, Lawrence served on the Joint Commission on Ecumenical Relations and the General Board of Examining Chaplains. He was the recipient of honorary degrees from Virginia Theological Seminary, General Theological Seminary, and Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School.

Lawrence’s deep concern for social justice and racial equality directed his academic and Church careers at home and abroad. He was a participant on the Anglican Consultative Council in England (1981) and in Nigeria (1984). In 1982 the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, of which he was a longtime member, awarded him the Episcopal Peace Award. He was an early advocate within The Episcopal Church for the end to South Africa's apartheid policies, and led the effort that resulted in the Church's 1985 vote to divest its portfolio of stock in firms continuing to work in South Africa.

Charles Lawrence married Margaret Morgan on June 5, 1938 and together they had three children. He II died in Pomona, NY, on April 3, 1986 at the age of 70.

Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence was born in Harlem, New York and raised in Vicksburg, Mississippi. After graduating from the local all-black high school at the age of 14, she moved to Harlem to further her education at the prestigious Wadleigh High School for Girls. Two years later she graduated with a scholarship to attend Cornell University as a pre-med student.

As the only black student on campus, Lawrence was not permitted to live in the dorms, and despite graduating with a nearly perfect academic record, she was denied entrance to Cornell’s medical school. In 1940, Lawrence graduated from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Three years later, she earned a master’s degree in public health from Columbia University. In 1948, she became the first African American to be certified in psychoanalysis at Columbia University’s Columbia Psychoanalytic Center.

Lawrence began her career teaching pediatrics and public health at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1963, she became a founding member of the Harlem Family Institute, a psychoanalyst training institute. Until her retirement in 1984, she was also a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. For over two decades, Lawrence served as chief of the Developmental Psychiatry Center for Infants and Young Children and their Families at Harlem Hospital Center.

Lawrence was a member of the Peace Fellowship of The Episcopal Church and the recipient of an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. Her remarkable career was celebrated by one of her daughters, Dr. Sara Lawrence Lightfoot, in a 1998 biography, Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer.

Margaret Morgan Lawrence married Charles Radford Lawrence II on June 5, 1938, while she was in medical school, and together they had three children. She died in Massachusetts on December 4, 2019 at the age of 105.