James Spencer and the Colored Catholic Congress Movement

James Spencer (1849–1911), a leading member of the black St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Reconstruction-era Charleston, South Carolina, was the son of a slave and a free black woman. He served in the South Carolina General Assembly in the 1870s where he fought for racial equality. He was equally dedicated to equality in the Catholic Church. When Bishop Henry Pinckney Northrop sought to segregate the city’s Catholic churches in 1888, Spencer took his fight for equality beyond the confines of South Carolina and joined the Colored Catholic Congress movement which flourished from 1889 to 1894. While the congress movement did much to bring attention to racism in the Church, secular and religious Jim Crow pressure brought the organization to a standstill by 1894, causing Spencer to turn his dedication and organizational talents to confront other racist institutions in Charleston.