“The Negro Problem”: Two Catholic Journalistic Debates over the Equality of Blacks

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were two printed debates among Catholics over the issue of equality for blacks. These exchanges sandwiched the establishment of Jim Crow, the first occurring just as the South committed itself to that policy, and the second after legalized segregation was firmly in place. They offer a window into the thinking of Catholics both North and South about the place of African Americans in society and the church. This article situates the debates in their contexts, presents their content, teases out their meanings, and demonstrates the retreat from the call for full social equality that occurred in some quarters of Catholic thought.