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15 - Black Catholics

from Part III - The Many Faces of Catholicism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2021

By
Cecilia A. Moore
Edited by
Margaret M. McGuinness  and
Thomas F. Rzeznik
Margaret M. McGuinness
Affiliation:
La Salle University, Philadelphia
Thomas F. Rzeznik
Affiliation:
Seton Hall University, New Jersey
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Summary

On Easter Sunday in 2010, nineteen elementary and middle school students in the District of Columbia awoke to find themselves featured in The Washington Post.1 These children had captured the newspaper’s attention because the previous night they became members of the Catholic Church. During the Easter Vigil at St. Augustine’s, “the mother church of Black Catholics” in the nation’s capital, these girls and boys received the sacraments of baptism and holy communion. All of these new Catholics attended St. Augustine parochial school where non-Catholic children constituted the majority. However, on their first day back at school after the Easter Vigil, the number of Catholic students enrolled at St. Augustine’s rose from 51 to 70 out of a total of 185.

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Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to American Catholicism , pp. 266 - 287
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Brown, Joseph A., SJ. To Stand On the Rock: Meditations on Black Catholic Identity. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998.Google Scholar
Copeland, M. Shawn, ed., with Mosely, LaReine-Marie, SND, and Raboteau, Albert J., eds. Uncommon Faithfulness: The Black Catholic Experience. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009.Google Scholar
Cressler, Matthew. Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migration. New York: New York University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Davis, Cyprian. The History of Black Catholics in the United States. New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1990.Google Scholar
Morrow, Diane Batts. Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1828–1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Ochs, Stephen J. Desegregating the Altar: The Josephites and the Struggle for Black Priests, 1871–1960. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.Google Scholar

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