The Rev. Buford Gordon · the community writes its own study

1920 – 1925

A pastor with a chemistry degree counts his own people: Buford Franklin Gordon was born in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1893, the son of a formerly enslaved man. He took a chemistry degree at Fisk University, studied at Yale Divinity School, served in the First World War, finished his divinity degree at the University of Chicago, and came to South Bend in December 1920 to pastor Taylor A.M.E. Zion Church. In 1922 he published, at his own expense, The Negro in South Bend: A Social Study — the first history and sociology of Black South Bend, written from inside it. His numbers are the baseline every later account starts from: 604 Black residents in the city as of the First World War; 1,269 in the census of 1920, in a city of 70,983; and the South Bend Tribune's estimate of about 3,000 by 1922, as the wartime migration filled the foundries. (One modern scholarly article prints the 3,000 figure against 1920 itself; Gordon's own book separates the census count from the Tribune estimate, and his separation is followed here.) He found three Black churches when he arrived — a fourth was founded in 1923 — and an associational life already formed: the St. Pierre Ruffin's Club for women, dating to 1900, and the Literature, Art, and Research Club for men.

His judgment that racial tension had been low before the war "largely due to the small number of black residents in the City" is quoted by the 2026 Commission report, which leans on Gordon throughout — as does this section. Gordon's book did one more documented thing: read by Frank E. Hering, it moved the gift that built Hering House (below). He pastored Taylor A.M.E. Zion until 1925 and built its new church under Klan attack while he wrote. The book was republished by Wolfson Press in 2009, edited by David Healey, and remains the founding text of this history.

Sources:

1. Buford F. Gordon, The Negro in South Bend: A Social Study (1922; republished Wolfson Press, 2009, ed. David Healey) — the 604 / 1,269 / 3,000 figures, the three churches, the Ruffin's and Literature, Art, and Research clubs, as carried in the Reparatory Justice Commission report, Parts I–II, and in Belt Magazine's account of the book.
2. City of South Bend, Final Report of the Reparatory Justice Commission (2026), Part I — Gordon's biography: Pulaski birth, Fisk, Yale Divinity, war service, Chicago divinity degree, the Taylor A.M.E. Zion pastorate from 1920.
3. Jon Tidmarsh, Belt Magazine (2016), on the Gordon study and the 2009 reprint — the book's prompting of the Hering gift; Gordon's benediction at the Hering House dedication.