The Emergence of a Black Catholic Community: St. Augustine's in Washington by Morris J. MacGregor (review)

BOOK REVIEWS66 1 and standard, Holy Cross might have become a battleground over an admission policy poised to admit women. Instead, to maintain its high academic standards and meet its enrollment goals, talented young women were made welcome. A persistent complaint of past administrative practice in most Catholic colleges is the brevity of presidential terms. Most schools followed a rule for religious superiors that limited presidents (and in Jesuit houses, rectors) to two three-year terms. At Holy Cross, if Fathers Swords and Brooks are excluded, presidential terms averaged slightly fewer that four years, but Father Kuzniewski does not call this a fault. All presidents were young, usually under forty, some had administrative experience before taking office at Holy Cross, and only two served separate terms: Fathers Anthony Ciampi (three) andJoseph Dinand (two). The author is persuasive in arguing that an absence of local autonomy— with all grave decisions made at a provincial or higher level—was only a brake on, not an obstacle to, progress. Whether the author or the publisher should be credited, notes are where they belong, at the bottom of the page, where either for documentation or explanation , they are excellent. The book might have benefited from a standard bibliography. Finally, it is a handsome, almost flawless volume, that scholars and others interested in American higher education are sure to welcome. Edward J. Power Boston College The Emergence ofa Black Catholic Community: St. Augustine's in Washington . By Morris J. MacGregor. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. 1999. Pp. xiii, 543. $39.95 clothbound; $24.95 paperback.) This is how parish history should be written: with an eye to the big picture ! In this substantial volume, Morris J. MacGregor, drawing on rich archival sources, newspapers, and oral interviews,gracefully recounts the story of St. Augustine 's Parish, the mother church of black Catholics in the nation's capital and historically one of the most prominent black congregations in the city. Expanding on recent scholarship onAfricanAmerican Catholics and the urban encounter between Catholicism and race, MacGregor skillfully contextualizes this particular case study of a black Catholic community in microcosm, consistently tying developments at St. Augustine's to the larger racial currents swirling through the city, nation, and church. In the process, MacGregor paints a wonderful , variegated social portrait of black Catholic Washingtonians from 1864 through the 1980's. The author argues that for fourteen decades the determined pastors, priests, and people of St. Augustine's parish, despite adversity and formidable challenges (including almost constant debt), succeeded in creating and sustaining a vibrant African American Catholic community—one 662BOOK REVIEWS known for its social activism, rich associational life, evangelization, hospitality, devotion to education, and outstanding liturgical music. Limitations of space prevent more than a cursory sampling of this book and its themes. The founding families of St. Augustine's were free people of color prior to the Civil War and traced their Catholicism back to colonial times in rural Maryland. Indeed, middle-class respectability and the social divisions that sometimes existed between "aristocrats of color" and lower-class blacks would characterize St. Augustine's throughout much of its history. The desire of black Catholics in Washington to educate their children and to worship free from discrimination led to the construction of St. Martin's chapel and school (the forerunners of St. Augustine's). Organizers scored a financial coup when they persuaded President Lincoln to allow them to hold a fair on the grounds of the White House in 1864 as a fundraiser. The congregation quickly outgrew the small chapel, thanks in part to its extraordinary classical choir, which attracted blacks and whites from throughout the city and whose concerts would more than once rescue the parish financially. In 1876 the congregation moved into an imposing new brick structure on Fifteenth Street, which was placed under the patronage of St. Augustine. The energy and vigor of St. Augustine's during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century what with its fairs, parochial school, choir, and numerous parish societies fairly leap off MacGregor's crisply written pages. St. Augustine's parishioners and their supportive white pastors hosted and played crucial roles in the Black Catholic Congress movement...