In addition to being a mother and wife, Jessie Day was an influential member of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church. She and Grace’s father had been active as a Baptist, and their sister Nelly had even married a pastor. The impressive church at East Thirty-first Street and Madison Avenue was cornered by four towers of dark brown wood and steep, fluid steps. The leader of the Madison congregation was the Reverend Dr. George Caleb Moor, who had come by way of Brooklyn, where he was pastor of the Baptist Temple there. He was a rising star in the clergy: a passionate, handsome family man with a wife and child. He was a very hard worker; he once had to stop during a sermon because he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown after part of his church had been destroyed by fire.
Moor did not shy away from the secular world in his work. As he delivered a sermon titled “Is the Kaiser the Anti-Christ?” two men in the front row ducked their heads and made a hasty exit. As they disappeared, Moor remarked that he hoped they would at least come back for his lecture on Russia and the czar. It was the first in a series of six sermons titled “Thrones and Dominions vs. the Throne of God.” But Moor was not all political brimstone. He also delivered a series of lectures titled “The World’s Great Rivers.” Moor was, by all accounts, a wonderful church leader.
On the night of February 19, 1922, a meeting of the membership was called by the trustees of the church. Held in Sanders Hall, the church auditorium, the meeting was closed to outsiders and press. Once everyone arrived and was seated, the doors were locked shut. A reporter for the Times stood outside, prepared to wait it out. Sometime later, a small group of elderly women emerged, flustered and fanning their necks. As more time passed, the reporter watched younger women leave in shocked states, their handkerchiefs to their mouths. “This is a disgrace,” one of them said. “We will not stay in there while she reads that statement, but we intend to go back and cast our votes when she’s through.”
When the doors were finally opened at twelve thirty in the morning, the Times reporter was told that during the meeting, Jessie Day had produced the diary of a young female parishioner. With Grace seated beside her, Jessie stood up straight and started reading it aloud. Some of the older members of the church left immediately. As Jessie progressed further in the diary, more women also found themselves unable to remain. Many withdrew, some so shocked by the narrative that they became hysterical. What Jessie was reading was disturbing because it implicated a church member in having an affair with this young girl. The man being accused was Reverend Moor, who was seated directly across from Jessie and her sister.
Once Jessie was finished, she quietly sat down. After heated discussion, the church voted to retain Moor. They then voted to expel Jessie Day with a vote of 64 to 43. A longtime deacon, W. S. Foster, who supported Jessie during the meeting, was also charged by Moor himself with “acts unbecoming a Christian and a church member.” Foster was also expelled 72 to 17. Moor’s wife had remained in the meeting the entire time. At its close, she said she was “tired, but very happy.” Moor was scheduled to preach later that day; the title of his next sermon was listed in the newspaper as “Feeling Gray.”
Jessie and Grace were stunned. They had actual physical proof—a diary!—that Moor was behaving indiscreetly, but they still knew that accusing him would be a gamble. Jessie had now been stripped of her church membership, one of the most important forms of identity a New York society woman could claim. But they were not going to give up. Another longtime church member, Dr. Hall, also called for Moor’s expulsion, so another meeting was held, with Jessie and Grace there to support his cause.
As Grace sat there with her sister, she watched as Moor and his people again came into the room. Grace saw someone in the back pushing a wheelchair. She felt Jessie’s hand press upon her arm in a very hard way. Grace looked closer as the man was wheeled in. Her shoulders fell. It was their brother, Adoniram Judson Winterton Jr.
There was shouting in the room. Grace stared at this white-haired man who looked like her father. She looked at this man, her brother, whom she once told a whole room of reporters was already dead.
Once things quieted down, Adoniram was given the chance to speak. He rose and denounced his sisters, saying that they were unfit to take communion and that he himself had been forced to withdraw from the church by the abuse of his family. When he sat down, his words still hung in the air.
Grace explained to the room, in a quiet voice, that Adoniram had been in a sanitarium and was very sick. She said that Moor “dug him up and brought him there” only “to embarrass her.” Grace asked that all of the remarks, including hers, be struck from the record. When they finally got around to Hall’s case, the church board offered him immunity if he retracted the charges against Moor. Hall thought for a second and responded. “If I had to meet my God tonight,” he said, “I’d rather be an expelled member of this church than to be a leader under its present administration.”
Four months later, on appeal by the Southern New York Baptist Association, the church was ordered to reinstate the membership of Jessie Day. The ruling didn’t concern itself with the charges against Moor. Madison could still bar Jessie if they wished, but she would still be considered a member in good standing if she wanted to transfer to another church. Which she did. Their brother Adoniram also wrote into the newspaper and said that he had been completely misquoted in the press about his sisters. His retraction was delivered by a typed letter.
Moor maintained his innocence. “How would I have been able to carry on my work for thirty years if I were capable of doing all these things?” he asked. He told his flock not to worry. “I’m going to stay right here until Hades freezes over,” he said.
*
A year later, on March 14, 1923, Grace was once again late to court. She was riding a trolley car with her new legal assistant, Marion Lithauer. Hannah Frank had moved on to her own successful practice, as had many of Grace’s female assistants. When the car stopped, Grace dropped down from the platform and took a quick look before crossing Third Avenue. A traffic cop was stationed there. He pulled in a breath and blew on his whistle for the crossing traffic, consisting of carriages, streetcars, and automobiles, to stop. Grace started to cross when a small truck pushed through the light and hit her. The driver pulled on the emergency brake and squealed the car to a stop. As he jumped out, Lithauer was kneeling over the fallen body of Grace Humiston.
The cop, W. E. Meier, ran across the intersection and bent down to look at Grace. She was doubled over but still alive. The front wheel of the truck had crushed her ankle. Grace begged the policeman to call a cab, which he did. Lithauer helped Grace into the cab, and they sped off. Meier arrested the driver, a man named William H. Heck.