The New Orleans Sisters of the Holy Family: African American Missionaries to the Garifuna of Belize

Chapter 2: Mother Austin Jones and the Early Mission

26 C h a p t e r 2 Mother Austin Jones and the Early Mission Mother Austin was the first mother superior of the Holy Family Sisters who spoke English rather than French as her first language. She was also the first who did not descend from the Creole class of gens de couleur libre. Thus, in many respects her election marks the finalization of the congregation’s gradual transition from a Creole African French orientation to one that was more African American. Indeed, Sister Bernard Deggs, in her history of the Holy Family Sisters, sums up Mother Austin’s importance to her community when she labels her the “most capable” and “most successful” of the congregation’s mother superiors.1 Born on May 7, 1861, in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, as Mary Ellen Jones, she entered the Holy Family community in 1877 and was formally professed in 1879. Following three years of religious training , she was assigned to St. Mary’s Academy in New Orleans as principal . Her intelligence, administrative ability, and disposition for the religious life did not go unnoticed; in 1891 she was elected mother superior even though she was only thirty years of age. Thus, she became the youngest mother superior in the congregation’s history. So suc- Mother Austin Jones and the Early Mission   27 cessful was she in that office that she was elected six consecutive times. Her tenure only ended with her death in 1909. Jones had entered the congregation at the end of Reconstruction. By that time the Fifteenth Amendment had given blacks the right to vote, and a significant number had been elected to political office. Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, outlawing racial segregation in “public accommodations.” And equally important to the Holy Family Sisters, several new postulants had joined their community . In short, it was a time of great hope for the sisters.2 By the 1890s, however, when Mother Austin took up the reins of leadership in her religious community, optimism had vanished along with Reconstruction. In 1883 the U.S. Supreme Court had outlawed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and by 1885 most southern states had passed laws requiring separate schools for blacks and whites. By the mid-1880s only a few decaying public schools for black children still remained open in New Orleans, and white officials had ended public education for black students after completion of the sixth grade. In 1896 the Supreme Court would legalize racial segregation in its in­ famous Plessy v. Ferguson decision, a forerunner of “separate but equal.” Two years later the “grandfather clause” would be written into the Louisiana Constitution, thereby disenfranchising African Americans. Indeed, by the time Jones was elected mother superior, Jim Crow laws had been put into effect throughout the South, thereby ensuring that the black population would be relegated to a status that was little better than slavery. Those who were not willing to accept their inferior status with docility would more likely than not have to face the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan.3 To make matters worse for the Holy Family Sisters, the Klan despised Catholics almost as much as it did blacks. Yet, faced with such a bleak environment, Mother Austin would not only hold her congregation together, but under her skillful tutelage it would also grow in numbers as never before and significantly expand its apostolate to poor blacks. New schools and orphanages would be opened in New Orleans. The sisters would expand their labors to include the teaching of boys and to construct better facilities for the indigent elderly. For the first time the sisters would go beyond southern Louisiana, opening schools in Texas and Arkansas.4 Yet Mother Austin’s bold decision to accept Bishop Salvatore Di 28  The Pre–Vatican II Period­ Pietro’s invitation to send sisters to Stann Creek in British Honduras was perhaps her most significant achievement. Di Pietro, a Sicilian Jesuit, had come to British Honduras in 1869 and was shortly thereafter appointed Jesuit Superior for the colony, a position he held off and on until he was named the vicar apostolic (first bishop) of Belize on April 16, 1893. This was the same year that the order’s superior general in Rome transferred Jesuit jurisdiction in British Honduras from the English to the U.S. Missouri Province. In 1897, Di Pietro traveled to New Orleans with a request that...