Black Catholics and Black Power

This chapter introduces the Black Catholic activists in Chicago who, inspired by Black Power and the Second Vatican Council, fought for the self-determination of Black Catholics in the Archdiocese of Chicago and contributed to the birth of the national Black Catholic Movement. It argues that Black Power was more important than interracial liberalism with regard to Black Catholic involvement in the Black freedom struggles. It focuses on the protest movement to make Fr. George H. Clements, a prominent Black priest and activist, pastor of St. Dorothy parish. This movement united Black Catholics with Black Panthers and other Black Power organizations. The chapter discusses the creation of Black Catholic liturgies that creatively combined Catholic ritual practice with black cultural nationalism. It also illustrates that the incorporation of Black Power into Catholic life by activists was incredibly controversial, especially for other Black Catholics who objected to the “racial particularism” of Black nationalism, which they understood to be in conflict with Catholic universalism.

Introduction

This chapter begins with the ten Black bishops declaring in 1984 that Black Catholics should be “authentically Black and truly Catholic.” It contrasts this statement with the story of Mary Dolores Gadpaille, who argued in 1958 that Catholicism “lifted her up above the color line.” It juxtaposes these two examples in order to introduce readers to the central questions that govern the book. Why did tens of thousands of African Americans convert to Catholicism in the middle decades of the twentieth century? What did it mean to be Black and Catholic in the first half of the twentieth century and why did it change so dramatically in the thirty years that separated Gadpaille from the bishops? How would placing Black Catholics at the center of our historical narratives change the ways we understand African American religion and Catholicism in the United States? The chapter situates the book in scholarship and briefly introduces readers to Black Catholic history writ large.

The Living Stations of the Cross

This chapter introduces “the Living Stations of the Cross,” a Black Catholic reenactment of the passion and death of Jesus performed annually by parishioners of Chicago’s largest Black Catholic church from 1937 to 1968. This devotional practice serves as a lens through which to better understand the ways in which Catholic ritual life and relationships distinguished Catholic converts from the Protestant churches proliferating around them in the midst of the Great Migrations. It argues that Black Catholics should be understood as sharing in the same impulse as other new religious movements or “religio-racial movements,” such as the Black Hebrews and Black Muslims, who adopted religious practices and bodily disciplines that marked them as different from the assorted Black evangelical practices that were quickly coming to be understood as normative for Black religious life (known by the shorthand “the Black Church”).

Conclusion

This chapter introduces readers to the most famous Black Catholic parish in the country today, St. Sabina’s on the South Side of Chicago, and its nationally renowned white pastor, Fr. Michael Pfleger. It argues that it is impossible to understand the distinctively Black Catholicism on display at St. Sabina’s today without first understanding the longer history of Black Catholic Chicago explored in the book. It also reviews the ways in which studies of Black Catholics introduces new characters and generates new conclusions with regard to the study of African American religion and American Catholicism.

Becoming Black Catholics

This chapter illustrates how Fr. George Clements creatively combined Black Power with the methods of early-twentieth-century missionaries with great success in his pastorate at Holy Angels parish. It examines the relationships Clements forged with other Black Power organizations and explores the life of Holy Angels Catholic school. It expands the scope of the story from the previous chapter and discusses the establishment of national Black Catholic institutions and organizations. Ultimately, it argues that, faced with opposition from fellow Black Catholics who resisted the influence of Black Power, activists became missionaries of a sort as they worked to convert their coreligionists to a particular understanding of what it meant to be Black and Catholic. They brought to life a distinctively Black Catholicism in the process. It devotes attention to what activists meant by “authentic Blackness” and whether it was compatible with Catholic religious practice.

Becoming Catholic

This chapter argues that in order to fully understand why African Americans converted to Catholicism, it is important to avoid functionalist answers that attempt to reduce conversion to a choice on the part of the convert and instead attend to the many overlapping practices, pressures, experiences, and relationships that shaped the process of becoming someone new. Intervening in debates in theories of religion, it further argues that scholars should take seriously the claims made by Black Catholics that “faith” made them Catholic, which should then lead scholars to consider what conditions make faith possible in the first place. It discusses “the Chicago Plan,” devised by Fr. Martin Farrell and Fr. Joseph Richards, in which missionary priests and sisters explicitly linked the enrollment of non-Catholic children in Catholic schools with mandatory religious education of the family in order to promote the conversion of African Americans. It then explores in depth the inner lives of African American children and parents in Catholic schools who became Catholic as they learned new ways of living in and experiencing the world.

Migrants and Missionaries

This chapter introduces readers to the rise of Black Catholic Chicago in the midst of the Great Migrations of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North, both in terms of demographic growth and the establishment of an institutional infrastructure. It argues that African American migrants were introduced to Catholicism by white missionaries who reimagined Black neighborhoods as “foreign missions” in need of conversion. The chapter discusses the fraught relationships forged between missionaries and migrants, which were defined by the tension between the missionary dedication to the salvation of African Americans on the one hand and the paternalism of missionary work among those perceived to be “heathens” on the other. It introduces readers to Fr. Joseph Eckert, one of the most successful missionaries among African Americans, and his methods for conversion that served as a model for the missionaries in chapter 2.