This article was presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Urban Sociology Session. I wish to thank Hilary Silver, Phil Kasinitz, and Lawrence Jackson for their helpful comments as well as the Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston for their invaluable assistance.

1. Bluestone, Barry and Stevenson, Mary Huff, The Boston Renaissance: Race, Space, and Economic Change in an American Metropolis (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000 Google Scholar).

2. Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, Parish Directory, 2002.

3. See Menjivar, Cecilia, “Religion and Immigration in Comparative Perspective: Catholic and Evangelical Salvadorans in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Phoenix,” Sociology of Religion 64 (2003): 21–45 Google Scholar, on religious affiliations; Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette, ed., Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants (Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2007 Google Scholar), on religion and social justice activism; Tweed, Thomas A., Our Lady of Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997 Google Scholar), on Cuban Catholics in Miami; and Kurien, Prema, “Becoming American by Becoming Hindu: Indian Americans Take Their Place at the Multicultural Table,” in Gatherings in the Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration, ed. Warner, Stephen and Wittner, Judith G. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 37–70 Google Scholar, and Prema Kurien, “Multiculturalism, Immigrant Religion, and Diasporic Nationalism: The Development of an American Hinduism,” Social Problems 51 (2004): 362–85.

4. Gordon, Milton, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964 Google Scholar); Tomasi, Silvano, Piety and Power: The Role of Italian Parishes in the New York Metropolitan Area, 1880–1930 (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1975 Google Scholar).

5. Agood example of this trend in the scholarship is the work on political incorporation. See, for example, Michael Jones-Correa, “Bringing Outsiders In: Questions of Immigrant Incorporation,” paper prepared for the Conference on the Politics of Democratic Inclusion, University of Notre Dame, October 2002; and the comparative volume by Gary Gerstle and John Mollenkopf, eds., E Pluribus Unum? Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001).

6. Appardurai, Arjun, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 178–200 Google Scholar.

7. The data reported here comes from a larger ethnographic project entitled No Longer Invisible: Haitian Immigrants in Post-Racial Boston. I draw on hours of unobtrusive and participant observations and approximately seventy-five formal interviews conducted from 1998 to 2002 with first- and second-generation Haitian immigrants, Boston-born Haitian ethnics, return migrants (in Haiti) who lived in Boston, Haitian community leaders, and black and white Bostonians who interact with Haitians in the city. Additional resources and documents for this article come from the archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston (RCAB), the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, Catholic Schools Office, 2002–2003 Annual School Report (CSO), and the Archdiocese of Boston's Ethnic Apostolate (EA).

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9. Kane, Paula M., “Review of Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed by Gerald Gamm,” Church History 69, no. 3 (2000): 694 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. See the individual essays in Ebaugh, Helen R. and Chafetz, Janet S., eds., Religion and the New Immigrants: Continuities and Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations (Walnut Creek, Calif.: Altamira Press, 2000 Google Scholar); in Warner and Wittner, Gatherings in the Diaspora; as well as Chong, Kelly H., “What It Means to Be Christian: The Role of Religion in the Construction of Ethnic Identity and Boundary Maintenance among Second-Generation Korean Americans,” Sociology of Religion 59 (1998): 259–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar (see also Yang, Fenggang, Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities [University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999 Google Scholar]).

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14. I want to distinguish this assertion (that Catholicism was the part of being Haitian that was most effective in carving out a space in the city) from the way we understand religious identity under the assimilation framework and from the argument that Prema Kurien makes (in Warner and Wittner, Gatherings in the Diaspora) regarding the way her Indian respondents used Hinduism to become American. The Haitian Catholics in my study insist that, although these particular churches were foreign to them, the church itself was important to them as Haitians. A religious identity as Catholic did not prevail over a Haitian identity, it made it possible.

15. Laguerre, Michel, Diasporic Citizenship: Haitian-Americans in Transnational America (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

16. Notably, in Haiti, 85 percent of the population identifies itself as Catholic. See Conway, Frederick J., “Pentecostalism in Haiti: Healing and Hierarchy,” in Perspectives on Pentecostalism: Case Studies from the Caribbean and Latin America, ed. Glazier, S. D. (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1980), 7–26 Google Scholar.

17. In the larger work on which this article is based, a more durable factor—the notion of visibility—is added to residential clustering to explain the emergence of Haitian ethnic neighborhoods. As Howard Chudacoff notes, although the proportion of an ethnic group living in a particular area is significant, the location of that group's business, social, and religious institutions carries even greater weight in labeling a neighborhood as ethnic. “That is, the churches and clubs, plus the bakeries, groceries, butcher shops, shoemakers, tailors, saloons, and restaurants which directed their services to a special clientele and were operated by members of a specific ethnic group, helped markedly to define a neighborhood's character.” Howard P. Chudacoff, “A New Look at Ethnic Neighborhoods: Residential Dispersion and the Concept of Visibility in a Medium-Sized City,” Journal of American History 60 (June 1973): 89. In other words, the Catholic church is not the only institution worth examining, nor is residential clustering the only mark of Haitian community formation in Boston.

18. The segregation of blacks and the intermingling of black immigrant/ethnic groups in Boston occurred more persistently and more widely than integration with whites.

19. See Susan Jaster, Population and Housing Profiles (Boston: Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1984), for the Boston Redevelopment Authority; see also O’Brien, Margaret, Boston and Its Neighborhoods: Analysis of Demographic and Housing Data from the 1980 Boston Redevelopment Authority Household Survey (Boston: Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1982 Google Scholar).

20. As I have argued elsewhere, social distancing has become a sort of catch-all explanation for the behavior of black immigrants. See Jackson, Regine O., “Beyond Social Distancing: Intermarriage and Ethnic Boundaries among Black Americans in Boston,” in Other African Americans: Contemporary African and Caribbean Families in the United States, ed. Shaw-Taylor, Yoku (Baltimore: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 217–54Google Scholar. Anuanced discussion of social distancing is offered in Vickerman, Milton, Crosscurrents: West Indian Immigrants and Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 Google Scholar).

21. See Sowell, Thomas, “Three Black Histories,” in Essays and Data on American Ethnic Groups, ed. Sowell, Thomas (Washington, D. C.: Urban Institute, 1978), 41–48 Google Scholar; Sowell, Thomas, Ethnic America: A History (New York: Basic Books, 1981 Google Scholar); and Sowell, Thomas, The Economics and Politics of Race (New York: William Morrow, 1983 Google Scholar).

22. South, Scott J. and Crowder, Kyle, “Escaping Distressed Neighborhoods: Individual, Community, and Metropolitan Influences,” American Journal of Sociology 102 (January 1997): 1040–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and South, Scott J. and Crowder, Kyle, “Leaving the Hood: Residential Mobility between Black, White, and Integrated Neighborhoods,” American Sociological Review 63 (February 1998): 17–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gamm, Gerald, Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 89 Google Scholar.

23. The three-decker is a unique housing type characteristic of New England cities in the early twentieth century. Generally defined, it is a free standing, wood-frame structure on its own narrow lot, three stories high. Most of these units, 4,700 of the 5,250, are in Dorchester and were built between 1900 and 1930. See Krim, Arthur, Three-Deckers of Dorchester: An Architectural History Survey (Boston: Boston Landmarks Commission, 1977 Google Scholar), for a detailed architectural history; see also Husock, David, “Rediscovering the Three-Decker,” Public Interest 98 (1990): 49–60 Google Scholar, for more on these dwellings.

24. See Halter, Marilyn, “Staying Close to Haitian Culture,” in New Migrants in the Marketplace: Boston's Ethnic Entrepreneurs, ed. Halter, Marilyn (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 161–74Google Scholar, on new ethnic entrepreneurs in Boston.

25. See Fontaine, Pierre-Michel, “Haitian Immigrants in Boston: A Commentary,” in Caribbean Immigration to the United States, ed. Bryce-Laporte, Roy S. and Mortimer, Delores M. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, Research Institute on Immigration and Ethnic Studies, 1976), 111–29Google Scholar.

26. Gamm, Urban Exodus, 84, see map 16.

27. Humberto Medeiros to Leandre Jeannot, letter, August 23, 1972, Bishop/Archbishops’ Papers, St. Leo file, RCAB. Cardinal Humberto Medeiros served as archbishop of the Archdiocese of Boston from 1970 to 1983. Not only did Medeiros speak out publicly on issues concerning human rights and racial equality throughout his tenure, but his behavior here also shows that he considered Haitians to be part of his flock. See H. O’Connor, Thomas, Boston Catholics: A History of the Church and Its People (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000), 287–303 Google Scholar, for more on the Catholic church in Boston under Medeiros.

28. Notably, there was no record of petitions or requests from the city's Haitians for a Haitian priest in the RCAB archives or the parish files of St. Leo’s.

29. Even my Seventh-day Adventist and Protestant respondents reported sending their children to Catholic schools because Catholic education was the norm among Haitians.

30. Jean Joseph to Humberto Medeiros, letter, June 18, 1974, Bishop/Archbishops’ Papers, St. Leo File, RCAB.

31. See Dolan, Jay P., The Immigrant Church: New York's Irish and German Catholics, 1815–1865 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 122 Google Scholar, for a discussion of social conservatism and its roots in Catholic theology which may explain the lack of social activism among early Haitian arrivals in Boston around questions of school desegregation and housing discrimination. 32. Especially noteworthy is Paul Brodwin's work on Haitians in Guadeloupe. Paul Brodwin, “Pentecostalism in Translation: Religion and the Production of Community in the Haitian Diaspora,” American Ethnologist 30 (February 2003): 85–101.

33. See Greeley, Andrew M., The Catholic Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 126–27Google Scholar, on the factors that combined to produce the neighborhood parish among the old immigrants.

34. See O’Toole, James, “Review of Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed, by Gerald Gamm,” Catholic Historical Review 86 (2000): 711–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for more on this point; see also McGreevy, John T., Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 Google Scholar); McRoberts, Omar, “Review of Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed, by Gerald Gamm,” American Journal of Sociology 106 (2001).1809–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sullivan, Robert and O’Toole, James, Catholic Boston: Studies in Religion and Community, 1870–1970 (Boston: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, 1985 Google Scholar); and O’Toole, James, Militant and Triumphant: Henry William O’Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston, 1859–1944 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992 Google Scholar).

35. O’Connor, , Boston Catholics, 309 Google Scholar.

36. As part of the reorganization of the archdiocese in the last two decades, St. Leo's was suppressed in 1996 and merged with St. Matthew’s. This expanded the territory of the parish. Now the border parishes are St. John/St. Hugh and St. Gregory. While the parish had experienced financial trouble for more than ten years before the decision was handed down, I would argue that its eventual fate was tied more to the lack of a parish school than to a lack of support by parishioners.

37. In 1996, for example, the Catholic Schools Office began designating Haitians as a separate subgroup in its annual reports. Every school in the archdiocese must report how many Native Americans, Asians, Blacks, Haitians, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, Whites, and, as of 2000, multiracial students are enrolled every year.

38. Ammerman, “Religious Identities and Religious Institutions,” 214.

39. Dolan, , The Immigrant Church, 8 Google Scholar.

40. Stepick, Alex and Portes, Alejandro, “Flight into Despair: A Profile of Recent Haitian Refugees in South Florida,” International Migration Review 20 (Summer 1986): 345 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

41. Greeley, , The Catholic Imagination, 113 Google Scholar.

42. See Mooney, Margarita, “Haitians in Paris: Between Dispersion and Organization,” in Out of One, Many: The Communities of the Haitian Diaspora, ed. Jackson, Regine O. (forthcoming), on Catholic Haitians in ParisGoogle Scholar.

43. Kane, Paula M., Separatism and Subculture: Boston Catholicism, 1900–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 2 Google Scholar.

44. Another potential site for a similar analysis is the history of Haitian community development in Cambridge, Massachusetts, around Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church.

45. See Kane, Paula M., “Review Essay: American Catholic Studies at a Crossroads,” Religion and American Culture 16, no. 2 (2006): 263–71Google Scholar, for a critical discussion of the present state of crisis in the Catholic Church.