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

Introduction

xiii INTRODUCTION On  January , Daniel Arthur Rudd, a former slave and the proprietor and editor of the American Catholic Tribune, answered an invitation to speak before the Apostolate of the Press, an organization of Catholic editors and publishers, gathered in New York City. The youthful and energetic Rudd was at the zenith of his career. His many accomplishments up to this crowning moment demonstrate a man driven by deep resolve. Despite the bondage of his youth, Rudd, with the help of heretofore unknown benefactors , managed to get a well-rounded primary education, subsequently completing his high school training in Springfield, Ohio, following the Civil War. While residing in Springfield, Rudd became an accomplished printer and editor. In  he and partner JamesTheodore Whitson, M.D., established a newspaper, the American Catholic Tribune, which subsequently became a national publication boasting , subscribers by . This remarkably large subscription base made the ACT one of the most successful black newspapers of its era. Daniel Rudd was among the most visible and influential lay Catholics of his generation. In demand as a lecturer, he traveled extensively. On these excursions Rudd met and won the confidence and cooperation of many distinguished church leaders, including James Cardinal Gibbons (– ), archbishop of Baltimore; Henry Edward Cardinal Manning (– ), of Westminster, United Kingdom; and Charles Cardinal Lavigerie (–), archbishop of Carthage and Algiers and primate of Africa. Rudd and several delegates to the first Colored Catholic Congress held in Washington, D.C., in  were even hosted by President Grover Cleveland (–).1 At the same time Rudd was addressing the members of the Catholic press in New York, not far away in Philadelphia the delegates of the Colored Catholic Congress were meeting. Rudd was the visionary founder of this same organization established three years earlier. Moreover, Rudd appears to have been the initiator of the interracial lay Catholic congress movement. This important lay initiative was subsequently formed with the aid of influential German Catholic laymen William J. Onahan (– ) and Henry J. Spaunhorst. Despite Rudd’s amazing accomplishments, his decision to answer the invitation to speak before the members of the Catholic press was accepted with “some temerity.” Rudd’s sense of the moment, however, trumped his reservations; the editor of the American Catholic Tribune confessed that this same platform afforded “one of the greatest opportunities ” offered him to discuss issues of importance.2 Employing in his speech the jeremiad, a convention common to nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American social critics, Rudd reminded his audience that the “bas[ic] proposition of the American Government” was that “all men are born free and equal.” “Its primal law declares that no one shall be molested, in life, in liberty or in the pursuit of happiness.” The editor of the American Catholic Tribune argued that these same egalitarian principles were, in fact, “Catholic to the core,” the church and state “fully agreeing in these premises.”True to the jeremiadic construction, however, Rudd informed the members of the Catholic press that his race was “receiving more than their fair share of the ills that lay authwart [sic] the pathway of American life.” Yet Rudd, ever the optimist , held out hope that African Americans would in the not too distant future be afforded the opportunity to thrive in the United States.3 In this same address, Rudd voiced his conviction that the Catholic Church would play a pivotal role in the establishment of justice and in the recognition of the full equality of blacks in the United States. Rudd also argued that equality for African Americans was set forth in America’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence as well as in the U.S. Constitution. He called on Catholic editors not only to take up this work on behalf of blacks, but also to make it the “very highest class of the current literature of the day.” Further, Rudd reminded his audience that as a result of the church’s “matchless charities,” the “absolute equality before her altar,” the “magnificent rites and ceremonials,” and the “soundness of her philosophy,” it had gained the “admiration” and “confidence ” of a “developing race.”4 In this same speech, Rudd urged his predominantly white Catholic audience to make a conscious effort to reach out to blacks. On behalf of African Americans, Rudd called on Catholics to “cast within their reach” xiv INTRODUCTION the “anchor chain of Catholic Hope, Love and Charity.” This could be done, he further explained, on several...