A Cry for Justice: Daniel Rudd and His Life in Black Catholicism, Journalism, and Activism, 1854-1933

5. Beyond Co
ncerns of Race

CHAPTER 5 Beyond Concerns of Race ‫ﱱ‬‫ﱠ‬‫ﱱ‬ It hardly seems possible, that civilization would at this point of its development, brook for a moment the scenes that are being enacted in Ireland. D. RUDD  OCTOBER  Raising his “cry for justice,” Rudd advocated for causes that stretched beyond the editor’s campaign for racial equality. For example, he addressed the issue of women’s rights. Rudd was equally concerned over the exploitation of American laborers. As a member of the Catholic Church, the editor was also aware of the injustices being faced by his coreligionists. In the ACT, therefore, Rudd spoke out on the contentious public school question.The editor’s campaign for justice and full equality moved beyond domestic concerns as well. He followed the lead of many fellow churchmen in his support of the restoration of the temporal authority of the pope. And, embracing a position many Catholics in the United States would have held, the editor also spoke out in favor of granting home rule for Ireland. Finally, Rudd on a number of occasions condemned the injustices facing peoples of color both in Africa and Latin America. Especially important in this regard was the editor’s fight against the African slave trade.  ‫ﱱ‬ ‫ﱠ‬ ‫ﱱ‬ Justice and Equality for Women in the ACT A new era of proscriptive pronouncements on the proper role of the woman in society was initiated at the close of the American Revolution. Barbara Welter has described the “cult of true womanhood” as it served to provide a model for the conduct of the ideal woman of the nineteenth century. Four virtues attended the life of the woman who had assumed her proper place: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Anyone tampering with this gender construct was deemed an enemy of God, civilization , and the republic. A foundational tenet of these gender norms was the conviction that the woman’s proper place was by her own fireside . From this vantage point, the true, pious woman could instruct her children and bring her men back to God. Those ascribing to this role for the ideal woman often viewed the campaign for women’s suffrage to be potentially harmful both to the institution of the family as well as to society more generally.1 The social expectations governing the role of the woman in society were part of a wider domestic ideology espoused by a large segment of nineteenth-century Americans, Catholic and Protestant alike. An important proponent of Catholic domestic ideology was Bernard O’Reilly.This author’s Mirror of True Womanhood, published in , went through seventeen editions by . In the pages of this volume, O’Reilly communicated gender norms held sacrosanct by many Catholics during the late nineteenth century. He believed the home to be the God-ordained sphere of influence for the woman. As the more virtuous of the two sexes, she was to bring her godly influence to bear on her husband and children within the home. On one occasion, O’Reilly wrote, “No woman animated by the Spirit of her Baptism . . . ever fancied that she had or could have any other sphere of duty or activity than that home which is her domain, her garden, her paradise, her world.”2 Though O’Reilly may have been opposed by some writers, his was the majority opinion. During the Civil War, suffragists seeking a sphere of influence beyond the home were opposed not only by members of the Catholic hierarchy, but also by prominent Catholic women, including Ellen Ewing Sherman (–), wife of General William T. Sherman (–), and Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren (–), wife of Admiral John Dahlgren (–). James J. Kenneally seems to be cor-  BEYOND CONCERNS OF RACE rect in his assertion that many Catholics retained a more traditional and circumscribed view of the ideal woman, even as Protestants during this period gradually adopted more “reasonable sentiments” with regard to the place of the woman in society.3 Despite widely held societal convictions about the proper sphere of the woman, creative and visionary women in the Catholic Church had for years been assuming roles that tested the boundaries of contemporary gender expectations, such as women who assumed religious vows. Whereas the ideal woman of the nineteenth century was viewed as a paragon of piety and was expected to find her fulfillment in marriage and housekeeping , those who took religious vows were among the most liberated in America. Many were self-supporting, owned property, became well educated , and were...