Introduction
As an institution, the Catholic Church in the South did not challenge prevailing race relations in the United States until the second half of the twentieth century. The southern Catholic Church participated in slavery and defended the practice while urging masters to manage their slaves with compassion. When the South adopted segregation laws in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, southern prelates began establishing churches and schools for African Americans. Although the Vatican permitted these racially separate institutions, in the 1930s it exerted growing pressure on the southern Catholic hierarchy to address racial discrimination and foster black evangelism. The papacy also endorsed the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ, which heavily influenced American Catholic advocates of racial equality, including some active in the Catholic Committee of the South that focused on the region’s economic, social and political problems.