Black, White, and Catholic: New Orleans Interracialism, 1947-1956

Preface

PREFACE Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. —MARGARET MEAD The activities of a small group of Catholic interracialists in the 1940s and 1950s had repercussions that went far beyond their immediate circle. By 1956, the archbishop of New Orleans, the Jesuit provincial of the New Orleans Province, and the Roman superior of the Society of Jesus, as well as the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana, had been drawn into the controversy that the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the Southeastern Regional Interracial Commission (SERINCO) unwittingly had provoked. How the seemingly innocuous meetings, lectures, and newsletters of a relative handful of idealistic Catholics convulsed the entire archdiocese of New Orleans is the subject of this story. In the 1940s, the Roman Catholic Church had not yet come to terms with its complicity in maintaining racial segregation in the southern United States, and, it is fair to say, had not adequately challenged race policy within or without the church. Yet, early in the post–World War II period there were nascent signs of change: Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter of St. Louis desegregated his archdiocese in 1947, and Archbishop Patrick A. O’Boyle of Washington followed suit the following year. Then in the 1950s southern bishops issued individual pastoral letters calling for an end to segregation within the church: Joseph Francis Rummel, archbishop of New Orleans, and Vincent S. Waters, bishop of Raleigh, did so in 1953, and Bishops Robert E. Lucey of San Antonio and Peter L. Ireton of Richmond followed in 1954. In 1958, a representative group of United States bishops issued a pastoral letter regarding the race question titled “Discrimination and the Christian Conscience.” Nevertheless, in the postwar period, a majority of the Roman Catholic clergy and laity did not challenge social mores concerning race relations. For most Catholics, segregation, if it was a problem at all, was a social, political, and/or legal problem but not necessarily a moral one.1 In New Orleans, a small but dedicated group of Catholics in the postwar period set out to challenge the racial practices of the day. Through interracial cooperation, black and white Catholic college students, black and white adult Catholic laity, black and white Catholic religious men and women, and black and white Catholic clergy, worked together to undermine the practice of racial segregation in the church. Catholic New Orleanians used the principle and practice xiii Anderson final pages 8/10/05 9:15 AM Page xiii of interracialism—organized interaction and cooperation between black and white Catholics to promote racial harmony and advance racial justice—to oppose segregation. Prayer, study, and reflection, leading to action, was an interracialist’s plan of attack. Interracialism influenced and informed Catholic opinion and practice through most of the twentieth century; it dominated the Catholic response to the race question. Interracialists’ efforts to end Jim Crow Catholicism resulted in some successes and many disappointments; ultimately New Orleans Catholic interracialists were suppressed at the hands of ecclesiastical and secular forces. Theirs is a complex story of religious principles clashing with social practice, of Christian charity conflicting with racial norms, of moral conviction succumbing to political expediency. Under the auspices of the National Federation of Catholic College Students, Catholic collegians established SERINCO in 1948, which was comprised of students from St. Mary’s Dominican College for white women,2 Loyola University of the South for white men,3 Ursuline College for white women,4 and the College of the Sacred Heart,5 also for white women but located in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, and male and female students from the only black Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States, Xavier University.6 The mere fact that black and white Catholic college students met together on equal footing to discuss racial issues aroused fierce opposition. In fact, the meetings and other activities these Catholic college students undertook led church officials at Loyola University of the South to try to disband the group early in its history. Of the two Catholic interracial groups in Louisiana, SERINCO was the more active and provocative.7 The other group, the CHR, a subcommittee of the Catholic Committee of the South, made up of adult Catholics of the archdiocese, averaging one hundred members a year, was established in 1949. Invoking Catholic principles to promote their cause, members of these organizations found kindred spirits who believed in racial equality and...