The Daughters of Charity as Cultural Intermediaries: Women, Religion, and Race in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles

As Catholic nuns and sisters ventured into the American West during the nineteenth century, they became important links between cultures and classes in the diverse communities they served. As Anne M. Butler argues, Catholic sisters made religion a significant part of the western experience by actively participating in cultural exchanges. These French, German, Irish, Spanish, and American sisters ate new foods, learned new languages, and lived in conditions that many would have previously thought unfathomable. They established hospitals and schools where Native Americans, Mexicans, Asians, and European immigrants received valuable social and educational services.¹ Importantly, Catholic sisters constructed their institutions as community services, thereby mitigating some of the religious tensions that characterized eastern cities at the time and fostering cooperation between Catholics, Protestants and Jews. Religious women acted as lynchpins in complex social structures, connecting the middle-class and the elite with the poor from many racial backgrounds. And although religious tensions increased as western cities grew, one community of religious women, the Daughters of Charity, maintained their position as cultural intermediaries in Los Angeles well into the twentieth century.

The social landscape in which the sisters operated changed dramatically in the early twentieth century. Los Angeles had shed its reputation as "Queen of the Cow Counties," and the city's population increased from 100,000 to 577,000 between 1900 and 1920. Ten years later, its population reached 1.24 million.² Although white Protestants remained in control of most of the city's economic and political institutions, the influx of Mexican, Japanese, and African American migrants created some uneasiness in the white middle class. The economic chaos produced by the Mexican Revolution contributed to a fivefold increase in the city's Mexican population. Its size and immigrants' assumed connections to political radicals like the Flores Magón brothers made Mexicans targets both for racial restrictions and altruistic reform.³

World War I further heightened fears of national disunity and sparked Americanization movements throughout the United States. As Judith Raftery and Gayle Gullett have shown, California clubwomen spearheaded the state's Americanization movement under the auspices of the Home Teacher Act of 1915. Organizers sponsored courses to instruct Mexican women in the English language, citizenship, and Anglo-American values. Stephanie Lewthwaite notes that instructors encouraged the production of Mexican handicrafts, ostensibly celebrating immigrant culture while essentializing and racializing the programs' participants.⁴ While riddled with contradictions and questionable results, Americanization programs did gain some political currency in the late 1910s and early 1920s. U.S. bishops took note and incorporated Americanization into diocesan charitable efforts.

Conscious of Protestant overtones associated with the movement, Bishop John J. Cantwell embraced Americanization as a "Catholic responsibility" during World War I. In doing so, he adopted the approach of the National Catholic War Council (later renamed the National Catholic Welfare Conference), which emphasized patriotism and assimilation to counter charges of Catholic disloyalty. Cantwell encouraged clergy, religious women, and lay charity workers to establish Americanization programs in Los Angeles. He endorsed a training course in Americanization techniques sponsored by the University of California Extension Division in 1919, including English instruction and citizenship. The diocese invested considerable resources in the Mexican community by sponsoring religious education classes, providing charitable relief, and endorsing social service programs for immigrants at the Brownson House and El Hogar Feliz settlements. The diocese also recruited Spanish-speaking sisters for the parochial school at the Plaza Church, appointed Spanish-speaking priests to establish "Mexican missions" in some parishes, and sought to build a church dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe.⁵ For their part, the Daughters of Charity continued their efforts to offer unconditional charity to the city's newcomers, particularly to the Mexican immigrants living in the shantytowns near their orphanage in Boyle Heights.

This article examines the ways that the Daughters of Charity employed their religious identity as Catholic sisters to cross cultural boundaries, acting as intermediaries between the city's charitable establishment and immigrant communities. The Daughters participated in Catholic Americanization programs but shaped them according to the spirit of their...