National Black Catholic History Month: Fr. Cyprian Davis, OSB

Meet Father Cyprian Davis, OSB.

The National Black Catholic Congress has described him as the "single most important leader in historical studies of the African-American Catholic Church in the United States."

The Washington, D.C., native and prolific writer is a graduate of Saint Meinrad College, The Catholic University of America and University of Louvain. He has been a Benedictine monk of Saint Meinrad Archabbey since 1951.

He teaches at the Saint Meinrad seminary. He also has taught at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans, according to his Saint Meinrad faculty profile.

He has been a tremendous inspiration to historians as well as black American Catholics and seminarians.

(Image via Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology)

Some works written or co-authored by Father Davis (all Amazon links):
Henriette Delille: Servant of Slaves, Witness to the Poor
Stamped with the Image of God: African Americans as God's Image in Black
Taking Down Our Harps: Black Catholics in the United States
The History of Black Catholics in the United States
To Prefer Nothing to Christ



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National Black Catholic History Month: Daniel Rudd

Daniel Rudd was born in 1854 to two slaves who lived on different plantations in the area of Bardstown, Ken. Both parents were Catholics. When he was baptized, his owner's daughter served as his sponsor.

After the Civil War, Rudd was educated in Ohio, where he worked as a journalist and founded a weekly newspaper, the Ohio State Tribune. He soon changed the name to the American Catholic Tribune (today known as the African American Catholic Tribune), which was the first Catholic publication owned and operated by a black man. He also worked for many years in Arkansas, where he invented a machine to load gravel and wrote a biography of the state's first black millionaire.

Rudd, who wanted to find a way to unite black Catholics and fight for their equality within the Church, founded the National Black Catholic Congress, then known as the Colored Catholic Congress, in 1889. During the first gathering, in Washington, D.C., President Grover Cleveland invited the group's leaders to the White House. Fr. Augustus Tolton, a man whom many consider to be the first black American Catholic priest, celebrated Mass for the group.

Rudd died in 1933, but the organization he founded still lives on. NBCC had its most recent conference in 2012 in Indianapolis.


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National Black Catholic History Month: Sister Thea Bowman, F.S.P.A., PhD

"Are you walkin with me?" Sister Thea Bowman from UM Southern Studies on Vimeo.

The woman who became known as Sister Thea Bowman was born Bertha Bowman in 1937 in Yazoo City, Miss. She was the only child of a teacher and the city's only black physician.

Although her parents were Methodists, they sent her to the Holy Child Jesus mission school in the city, which was staffed by the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. She was so impressed by the sisters' example and work that she converted to Catholicism while still in elementary school and became a member of FSPA, taking the name Thea, while still a teen.

After studying at Vitterbo University and Catholic University of America, where she wrote her dissertation on William Faulkner, Sister Thea began teaching, a career that would ultimately take her to schools and universities in Wisconsin, Louisiana and her native Mississippi.

After she had worked nearly two decades as a teacher, the bishop of her home diocese of Jackson, Miss., invited her to work as a consultant for intercultural awareness, meaning that she had to take on the complicated work of trying to find ways to bring black and white Catholics together both in Mississippi and nationwide at a time when much of the nation was still grappling with how the Civil Rights Movement had changed the country. She also encouraged U.S. bishops to pay attention to and try to find ways to incorporate the voices of black Catholics. Sister Thea was a charismatic speaker who made dozens of appearances each year.

She worked with Archbishop James P. Lyke on the popular African American Catholic hymnal, Lead Me, Guide Me.

Sister Thea was diagnosed with breast cancer in the mid-1980s. She famously told friends, admirers and the people who came to hear her speak that she was not cowed by her diagnosis.

"I want to live until I die," she said.

By the late 1980s, she had to give her acclaimed speeches and presentations from a wheelchair.

Sister Thea died in 1990, at age 52, in the home where she grew up.

Schools and community centers in Pittsburgh, Penn.; East St. Louis, Ill.; Utica, N.Y.; Cleveland, Ohio; and Gary, Ind.; among others, are named for her.

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National Black Catholic History Month: Our Mother of Africa Chapel

The chapel devoted to our Mother of Africa -- one of the many titles granted to the Blessed Virgin Mary -- is at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

According to the Basilica's website, the marble inlay at the front of the chapel represents that Henrietta Marie, a slave ship. The remains of the ship were discovered off Key West in 1972. The statue is of the Mother of Africa holding the Christchild. Both are depicted with African features.

The art in the room is meant to tell the story of the black American experience, from slavery to modern day. The National Black Catholic Congress notes that the sculptors and woodcarvers of the various projects in the room were Juvenal Kaliki, Ed Dwight, Jeffrey Brosk, Giancarlo Biagi, Jill Burkee and Jean Wiart.

The chapel is the gift of black American Catholics, under the leadership of Black U.S. bishops and the NBCC (stay tuned for a post about the NBCC). James Cardinal Hickey dedicated the chapel in 1997, according to the basilica's site.

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is located at 400 Michigan Ave, NW, Washington, DC. 20017.

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National Black Catholic History Month: Xavier University of Louisiana

No, not the one in Ohio.

Xavier University of Louisiana was founded by Saint Katharine Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, and is the nation's only institution of higher learning that is both historically black and Roman Catholic. It was established in 1925.

The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament remain a significant presence on campus, although the university is now run by an interracial joint lay and religious board of trustees.

The university is home to the Institute for Black Catholic Studies. It is one of the nation's top producers of black students who enroll in medical school.

Alexis Herman, the first black woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of Labor, and current U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin are among the university's notable graduates.

Learn more about the university at its website.

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National Black Catholic History Month: St. Josephine Bakhita

(The video above is a Portuguese-language film about St. Josephine Bakhita's life)

The woman who came to be known as Josephine Margaret Bakhita was born in the Darfur region of the Sudan circa 1869. She was kidnapped by slavers while still a child and sold several times, the last time to an Italian consul living in Khartoum, Sudan.

When the consul and his family returned to Italy, Bakhita went with them. In her early 20s, she became a Catholic. By her late 20s, she told her owners that she wished to officially join the Canossian Sisters. By 1896, she had professed her vows. She served the community as a cook, doing embroidery and attending to the door, according to Catholic Online.

Bakhita died on Feb. 8, 1947. Her last words were said to be "Our lady, our lady," in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

She was canonized on Oct. 1, 2000. During her canonization Mass, Pope John Paul II described her as "a shining advocate of genuine emancipation." Her feast day is Feb. 8, the anniversary of her death.

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National Black Catholic History Month: Lyke Conference

James Patterson Lyke was born in 1939 in Chicago. He was ordained a priest in 1966, and later served as the first black Catholic priest in the state of Tennessee. In 1979, Pope John Paul II called him to serve as auxiliary bishop of Cleveland, Ohio, where he served until 1990. In 1991, he was named the archbishop of Atlanta, according to the Lyke Conference site.

Lyke was one of the leading forces behind Lead Me, Guide Me, the popular African-American Catholic hymnal.

He died of cancer on Dec. 27, 1992, at age 53.

In the spirit of Lyke's life and interests, the foundation named for him works at engaging "the richness and giftedness of the Black community in the vibrant nature of the Catholic Church" to develop "powerful and effective Black Catholic worship."

The foundation has hosted the Archbishop James P. Lyke Conference eight times since 2004, the year it started. The 2014 conference will be June 11 to June 15 at the DoubleTree Hotel in New Orleans.

Read more about Archbishop Lyke and the foundation and conference named after him at the Lyke Conference website.

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National Black Catholic History Month: Pope St. Victor I

Some aspects of The Roman Catholic Church as we know it -- indeed, most of modern Christianity -- would not exist without the efforts of Pope (St.) Victor I, said to have been the first black African pope: He decided that Easter, the celebration of Jesus Christ's Resurrection, would always be observed on a Sunday.

He also was the first to write Church documents in Latin instead of Greek.

Victor was born in northern Africa, probably in the area of Tripoli in modern-day Libya. Little is known about his early life. He became pope in 186 or 189 A.D., according to the Vatican.

Pope Victor died in the year 199. He may have been martyred, according to Catholic News Agency.

His feast day is July 28.

(image via The Q Continuum)

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National Black Catholic History Month: Mother Mary Lange

If Mother Mary Lange, OSP, is canonized, she will become the first black American woman saint.

Elizabeth Clarisse Lange was born in the late 18th century in what is now Haiti (some sources claim she was born in Cuba) to a wealthy family.
By 1813 or so, she was living in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was part of a community of French-speaking black Catholics. By the 1820s, she was educating black children in her home at her expense. In 1828, a priest approached her and two other black women about teaching more children and she explained that what she wanted most of all was to dedicate her life to God and become a nun.

Although no black women were nuns in the U.S. at that time, the priest and archbishop of the diocese agreed to sponsor her. She took vows and became known as Sister Mary in 1828, according to the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

She established and was the first superior general of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, which was the world's first order of nuns founded by a woman of African heritage. As part of the order, she nursed the sick during a cholera epidemic and worked as a domestic at a seminary, among other tasks, according to the Mother Lange Guild. After the Civil War, when black children who had been orphaned by the war came to Baltimore in droves, Mother Mary Lange headed efforts to care for them.

She died on Feb. 3, 1882, well into her 90s.

In 1991, with the approval of the Vatican, William Cardinal Keeler, then Baltimore's Archbishop, opened the formal investigation of Mother Mary Lange's life which many hope will lead to her canonization.

Read more about Mother Mary Lange at a website devoted to the cause for her canonization.

(Image via National Catholic Review)

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National Black Catholic History Month: Who was the first black Catholic in the Americas?

Who was the first black Catholic in the Americas? Nobody knows for sure, but there are some historical candidates for the position.

Maybe it was Estevanico, the sixteenth-century man who was the first person in modern recorded history both to have been born in Africa and to have spent time in what is now the continental USA (it's been rumored that he never gave up the Islamic faith of his youth, though).

Maybe it was even Pedro Alonso Nino, who sailed the ocean blue with Christopher Columbus in 1492 (there's a Facebook page devoted to him, too!). It could even have been Juan Valiente, the sixteenth-century conquistador who traveled with Pedro de Alvarado's trips to Chile and Guatemala and helped develop Santiago de Chile. Or Juan Garrido (John the Handsome), said to have been a freedman of West African heritage who traveled with Hernan Cortes to Mexico (and even may have had some role in the Tenochtitlan massacre).

We may never know.

We know for certain, though, that more than a decade before the first enslaved Africans were brought to U.S. shores, a child of African heritage born on January 3, 1606, was baptized in St. Augustine, Florida. The baptismal records are reportedly still in the storied city's archives.

(Image via Catholic-link.com)

Related:
It's National Black Catholic History Month
National Black Catholic History Month: Father Augustus Tolton
National Black Catholic History Month: St. Martin de Porres

National Black Catholic History Month: St. Martin de Porres

(Image via Catholic Apologetics)

Today is the feast day of St. Martin de Porres.

De Porres was born in Lima, Peru, in the 16th century as the son of a Panamanian freedwoman who is generally considered to have been of mixed Native and African ancestry and a white Spanish nobleman. He became a lay brother of the Dominican order when he was in his 20s.

A popular (apocryphal?) story about de Porres tells about the time when a colony of mice infested the monastery where he lived. Although his Dominican brothers wanted to poison the rodents, de Porres instead spoke quietly to one of the pests, promised them food as long as they stayed away from the humans and then led them all outside, away from the monastery. He is said to have kept his word.

Pope John XXIII canonized de Porres in 1962.

He is the patron saint of African Americans, mixed-race people, people seeking racial harmony, hairdressers, lottery winners and social justice.

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National Black Catholic History Month: Father Augustus Tolton

Some people say Father Augustus Tolton was the first black American priest, but that's not clear (I'll discuss why in a later post). What is clear, however, is that he was born into slavery and was the first child of two American slaves to be ordained a priest.

Tolton was born in 1854 to the enslaved Peter Paul Tolton and Martha Jane Chisley in Missouri, and baptized Catholic. He felt the call to the priesthood as a young man, but was rejected by multiple American seminaries because he was black. He was ordained in Rome in 1886, and returned to the U.S., where he ministered in the Chicago area for many years. He died of heat stroke on July 9, 1897, as his mother, sisters and several nuns prayed nearby.

The Official Organization for the Promotion of the Cause of Canonization of Father Augustus Tolton (1854-1897) is working toward, well, the canonization of Father Tolton. There is also a Facebook page for the effort.



(Image via OSV.com)

Related:
It's National Black Catholic History Month

Follow my National Black Catholic History Month tag for more information on black Catholic notables.