‘Inequality in any form brings me to my feet’
Leigh Tolton’s path to Klamath Falls Friends
My full name is Rhonda Leigh Eason Tolton. I was born in Alabama during the heat of the civil rights movement. I was sent to “colored school” because of my mother’s progressive stances and her darker skin color.
My father was a White Southern Baptist professor and pastor, and very conservative. I grew up going to nightly church meetings. I was involved in many other young people’s activities, like the Sword Drill Bible championship and Girls in Action. These all helped my spiritual formation.
But it was really hard for the other children at the church to know what it was like for me at school. They were White, and they didn’t understand my reality. When I first got to Baptist Hill Elementary School, there was no running water, no floor tiles, and no books for us to use. My mother became head of the PTA. She forced the city to install plumbing in the school.
The night after Martin Luther King was killed, we had a meeting at my father’s Baptist church. One of the deacons used the n-word. It broke my heart. I left immediately and went outside. There were roofing tiles around that had been dropped off a railroad car. I sat on a pile of those tiles and cried for a long time.
About the same time I was getting beat up regularly on the playground at school. Most of the time the principal came to help. But one time a White teacher was just standing there and didn’t help me. She told me later, “I couldn’t help you because tonight’s the prayer meeting, and I didn't want to get my dress messed up.” She was the substitute that day. By then they were trying to put some White teachers slowly into the Black schools and visa versa.
My mother was a nurse. She used to collect leftover vaccines and administer them in communities of color. I enjoyed riding along with her. We were only 82 miles from Tuskegee, where the community still associated vaccines with the corruption of the syphilis project at Tuskegee Institute. The Black community accepted the vaccines much better from someone they trusted, and they trusted her.
Still, none of these life experiences had as much of an impact as the Friends who helped with the civil rights movement in Alabama from 1961 to 1968. The way that the Friends saw that of God in everyone and were true to living out equality as part of their lives seemed so genuine to me, and much more in line with my beliefs that were just forming.
Inequality in any form brings me to my feet. I grew up frustrated with people’s lack of acknowledgement of White privilege. I felt angry about the way that people who are heteronormative and White are often chosen and given advantages — the same advantages that are not given to people who are of color or who are not part of the White patriarchy (or will not support it). A hot button issue for me is seeing racism and homophobia embraced in church society.
I was known in grade school through high school for pushing back against sexism, classism, and unequal treatment of people with disabilities. By the time I was a young adult I was organizing in communities of color to help fight off multi-state garbage contracts and promoting recycling in the interdenominational church systems in Alabama.
While in Alabama in the mid to late 1980s I attended and was a member of University Baptist Church, which was expelled from the Southern Baptist Convention for ordaining women.
In the early 1990s I moved to North Carolina for better opportunities for work and activism. I attended Pullen Baptist Church there. They were also expelled from the Southern Baptist Convention for performing a same-sex wedding.
While in North Carolina, I worked for the North Carolina Council of Churches and the American Friends Service Committee, to help abolish the death penalty. This included working in Central Prison in Raleigh with death row inmates who were scheduled for execution.
I was also a mitigation specialist for ten years. I worked with defense attorneys on death penalty cases, trying to convince the governor to grant clemency to those with scheduled executions. One of my clients endured three scheduled execution dates, two refusals from the governor, and two stays by the courts before the governor finally granted clemency.
I saw how institutional racism and homophobia are as alive in our prison system as it is in our churches.
I completed my master’s degree in conflict resolution (in organizing and organizational development) and focused on community building, using the Scott Peck method for organizing. The Scott Peck form of community building is basically three days of open quietness while we waited to be spoken to “authentically from the heart.”
In 2009 to 2010, I moved back to Alabama to take care of my ailing father. I had a powerful opportunity as assistant to the pastor at Community United Church of Christ in Montgomery. Several of my classmates from my grade school were members there. Being reunited with them again felt like a gift from God.
The church had stained glass windows that had been dedicated in the 1960s to prominent white supremacists. One window and a new elevator was dedicated to an Alabama governor who famously said in his inauguration speech in 1963, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
By the time I was there in 2009, the church was mostly African American. The faces of the Biblical figures in the windows had been painted over with brown paint, adding a more authentic complexion to them. The small brass plates under each window dedicated to people who had been racist remained. Those windows gave me hope that things one day can change.
I moved to Richmond, Indiana, in 2011 to attend Earlham School of Religion. I graduated from the Master of Divinity program with a double focus on writing and pastoring. During this time I was pastor at West Elkton Friends Meeting in Ohio, just over the state border from Richmond, for 11 years. I also married my friend Joe under the care of the church, and he began serving as co-pastor with me at West Elkton Friends in 2015.
West Elkton Friends has had a history of being open and affirming since the early 1980s. It had a more distant history of making wagons with hidden bottoms in the beds that took many enslaved people to freedom. The meeting considered itself “rural and progressive,” so I felt quite at home there and enjoyed their generous heart for others. But God led forward.
About 2019, before COVID, I was moved to pray for and hold in the Light the Friends Church at Klamath Falls. I contacted the clerk there. I had no plans to move. My youngest, Jay, was in a good school system for him and years from graduating. A close friend of mine had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and needed my help. But the yearning to pray for Klamath Falls Friends continued.
After Jay graduated and my friend died, I contacted Klamath Falls to get an update on their pastoral search. There had been many small signs along the way that Klamath Falls Friends Church was a true leading. After consideration and clearness committees, our family committed to leaving all things behind. In 2023 we traveled across the country, based on a leading and a promise from the congregation for a year of service.
It has not been without its challenges. As we were backing our loaded-up U-Haul out of the driveway in Indiana, we received a call saying that a family member in North Carolina was terminally ill. He died six weeks later, leaving my two oldest adult children deep in grief.
The stress of the move, the death in the family, and pastoring a church that was going through transitions after COVID and the loss of the pastor before me triggered an underlying illness I have — lupus. However, the leading to remain and continue to be committed was and still is very strong.
Joe has become the co-pastor, helping the church to cut my hours and allowing me to rest more. Joe also works full time at the local hospital. Jay is now in his freshman year at Klamath Community College.
The move and getting settled in had its share of trials, but we are committed to serving God in Klamath Falls and as ministers for Klamath Falls Friends Church. Because of that, I requested that my recording status from the New Association of Friends in Indiana be transferred to Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting in October of 2024.
We look forward to years of service, and we ask you to hold us all in the Light as this happens.
Please pray also that God blesses Klamath Falls Friends Church. They have a heart for caring for others and are dedicated to equality among all people, with particular interest in equality with those from the local Klamath tribes. They want to be a light in the neighborhood and are a strong voice for peaceful change in the community.