Growing up—regardless of where or with whom I was living—I was always looking forward to the time when I would not be there. Lamenting the reality of being in a situation and relishing the thought of freedom from it was a constant state of mind.
I realize now that I didn’t change much as an adult. Reading through some of my old papers, I came across a paragraph I wrote in response to this stimulus statement: What a bore it is waking up in the morning the same person.
I wrote:
“What a bore it is waking up in the morning the same person. I wish I were already what I keep thinking and hoping I’m going to be. The same feelings of “when I grow up” face me each morning, day, week, month, and year. I’m bored with the anticipation. What is it going to be? What am I going to be? When? I have no fantasies of what I want to be. I don’t want to work at it. I want a miracle. The boredom is not complete, however, since I fear that I’ve been waiting for something that does not exist. My boredom is laced with the fear that perhaps I already am.“
Today, when I respond to queries about how I’m really doing, I can say with all candor and conviction that I’m content. Being content means more to me than just being all right or okay. For someone who has always yearned for something more or something else, being content is a sense of extreme wellbeing, happiness, and joy.
This long-awaited sense of contentment does not, however, diminish my New Year’s Day attitude that, “The best is yet to come!”
I have decided to stop saying, “Just be yourself and act natural.”
I realize that hearing this does not always motivate. It can even be devastating when one feels that just being one’s self is not enough.
This is where role models come in. If we think that being our natural self is not enough, who are the people we would like to be like in this situation?
Acting as we think the people we admire would act is still being ourselves. We’re just finding a way to bring this part of ourselves into focus for this purpose. It does not change who we are. Acting as we think a role model would act enhances and burnishes the self that we’re always creating.
Being our best selves by not deliberately deceiving for selfish reasons may be the better part of being authentic.
If we’re guided by a basic human value of treating others the way we would like to be treated or the way they prefer to be treated, I think we can simplify the complex issue of being our authentic selves.
For me, thinking about what it means to be authentic started when I read that one of RuPaul’s foundational beliefs is that “everybody is playing a role.”
In talking about dressing in drag, Jinkx Monsoon similarly says, “It’s armor because you’re putting on a persona.”
Why do people play roles and feel it necessary to put on a persona? Is it because these are ways of protecting one’s self? If this is the reason, then to be authentic is a very brave act.
But what does being authentic mean to a layperson? Some say that to be authentic is to act and behave the same way no matter the circumstances. Some say that one’s values should always be the compass for being one’s authentic self. A person may be seen as being authentic if they are known to speak their minds and stand by their convictions.
Notwithstanding these perfectly reasonable definitions, I think being authentic is a fluid concept to be wrestled with throughout a lifetime. I have come to the conclusion on this day at this time that we’re never not being our authentic, true, genuine, essential selves because how one presents is an innate survival instinct.
Although there are times when our authentic self may be the version of ourselves that we deliberately bring forth and exhibit, I don’t think most people wake up and decide which role they want to play that day.
However, I also believe that we are the stars in our own productions, whether fantasy, horror, drama, comedy, or all at the same time.
When someone says, “I was not being myself,” especially after doing something that they regret, we might have an inward smile and think, “Yes, you were being your authentic, true, essential self, and I understand.”
The week before Easter, one of my Millennial friends told me that she would like to find a Black church to go to on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I was surprised that she expressed this desire because she had never spoken about church before. Up to this point, I had not given much thought to Millennials and their religious habits and affiliations.
Shortly after this revelation that a Millennial was interested in going to a Black church for Easter services, I saw the documentary, gOD-Talk: A Black Millennials and FaithConversation. The film is the product of a collaboration between the National Museum of African American History & Culture and the Pew Research Center.
The narratives given by early and later Black Millennials are enlightening and fascinating. Some of these Millennials grew up in a family of generations of churchgoers and remained with their origins. Others expressed adherence to the beliefs and practices of other religions or philosophies—Atheism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Ifá, and Spiritualism. They talked about their journey to find themselves within the faith that was right for them.
Faith was the bedrock upon which they built. The tools were different according to the life they wanted to live. Regardless of the avenue they took to find themselves in a community of faith, the commonality was their orientation to eschew sexism and racism and to value social justice. In other words, similar to the traditional Black Christian church, they sought community and action in their gOD. What may seem fractured regarding Black Millennials and the church is more like a fusion that includes grace, acceptance, and transformation.
When I think about my core values, I think about the positive aspects of my beliefs and how they direct my actions and influence my orientation to others. I think of my values as the foundation from which I reach out, stretch, and move forward. Values form the crucible of my faith in myself and in others.
Like core values, when I think of spirituality, I think of some belief that is at its core humane with roots emanating from religiosity or other spiritual dimension. It speaks to the ultimate good coming from one’s God.
In the current cult of culture, neither core values nor spirituality can be assumed to be positive or good in relation to respect and love for fellow human beings. There seems to be no common understanding of standards of civility nor generally accepted ethics or morals.
It seems that in this cult of culture, we make decisions about the goodness or evilness of people based on their strong or even tangential affiliations. The presumption is that those who affiliate with a group share common values and beliefs. To the outsider, the assumption is that these shared values and beliefs, if not the same as our own, are not just different but juxtaposed to our core values and spiritual beliefs.
Sadly, in a cult of culture, there is a degradation of human interaction. For example, if a Black person is in conversation with a White person who seems to have similar ideas regarding justice and fairness, and the Black person learns that the White person is or used to be a police officer, something changes in the interaction. Stereotypically, there is instant or auto-suspicion of the White person by the Black person because of the White person’s affiliation with law enforcement because this group is often assumed to be biased, particularly against Black people.
Auto-suspicion is not only switched on between people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. The above example may raise suspicion even if the current or former police officer is Black, depending on what weight the other party puts on the different aspects of their conversation partner’s identity. In another example, someone who is of the same race or ethnicity may reveal that their child attends what is perceived as an ultra-conservative Evangelical Christian college, leading to assumptions about the person’s values and beliefs and perhaps a struggle to keep from closing off and becoming guarded about what one shares with the person thereafter.
In today’s cult of culture, there are suspicions and assumptions about people based on their political preferences. More than other characteristics, one’s political preferences are defining the essence of people. Before knowledge of political preferences, one’s actions and reactions are likely neutral and unbiased. Once the new knowledge about politics is revealed, there is often an instant lack of trust and a niggling feeling of fear and a hardness that becomes non-negotiable.
Non-negotiable attitudes are borne out of faith in concepts that usually do not stand up to the test of reason. In fact, a 2019 study by More in Common found a wide perception gap in how Americans tend to understand people on the other side of the aisle.
Sadly, the polarizing environment that we inhabit today is the lifeblood of our current cult of culture. A total lack of empathy and respect for those who share different political and religious views is a distressing byproduct of the cult of culture. There seems to be a virus of dogmatic beliefs based on prejudice rather than reason.
I live in an environment that is giving me a lot of experience in checking myself when I make assumptions about the values and compatibility of people based on previous understandings and interpretations of superficial characteristics. I’m beginning to believe that in some instances, my openness to seeing beyond the surface and acting on what I see before me rather than my assumptions tends to reduce my doubt, suspicion, and prejudice, as well as the doubt, suspicion, and prejudice from those with whom I interact.
It’s not easy to check myself and be clear-eyed and cognizant about what I value when auto-suspicion is so strong. I will keep working at it. I think it’s worth it. Don’t you?
After all, as the “Perception Gap” report rightly concludes: “A healthy democracy will always have some disagreement and conflict; it’s a necessary component of progress. But democracy also requires a sense of shared values and commitments, and a willingness to find common ground. This study suggests that there is more such territory than many imagine. By understanding our Perception Gaps, working to overcome our mistrust of the other side, and resisting the forces that seek to divide us, we can advance towards a future that we all want.”
How does it feel to be “Black and Blue,” traumatized daily by enslavement or racism? A response emerged in the 1929 song, “Black and Blue,” composed by jazz pianist “Fats” Waller, with lyrics by Harry Brooks and Andy Razaf. This song offers a snippet of what 19th-century America was like for Venerable Father Augustus Tolton, one of six African Americans now on the road to sainthood.
Fr. Augustus Tolton
Augustus Tolton (1854–1897) was born into slavery in Bush Creek, Missouri, to Martha and Peter Paul Tolton. The Toltons were married, baptized Catholics enslaved on neighboring Catholic plantations. Peter Paul Tolton escaped to join the Union Army during the Civil War and died in a hospital. Martha Tolton escaped with her children to Quincy, Illinois, in 1862. She was helped by Union soldiers as she paddled a rowboat across the Mississippi River, with bullets from Confederate soldiers splashing the water.
The first Catholic parish the family attended consisted largely of German immigrants. Many scorned the Black family’s presence. In 1865, when Augustus Tolton entered the parish’s St. Boniface School, he was forced to leave a month later due to unrelenting threats to the parish and school from children and adults.
When the family moved to St. Peter Parish, benevolent priests and nuns taught and protected Tolton as he attended St. Peter School when not working to help support his family.
Recognizing his academic and spiritual gifts, he was allowed to instruct Black children in religious education. At age 16, Tolton felt called to the priesthood. Although tutored for entrance into the priesthood, when he graduated at age 18 from St. Peter School, no Catholic seminary in the United States would accept Tolton because of his race. His mentors worked relentlessly to find him a place.
In 1880, at the age of 26, Tolton departed for Rome to enter the Collegium Urbanum de Propaganda Fide to become a missionary priest to Africa. Proficient in languages, Tolton learned Latin, German, Greek, and Italian. After six years of study, he was to be ordained on April 24, 1886, ready for Africa.
On the night before his ordination, Tolton was summoned by his mentor Cardinal Giovanni Simeoni, prefect for the Vatican Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.
“America has been called the most enlightened nation,” the cardinal told him. “We will see if it deserves that honor. If America has never seen a Black priest, it has to see one now. Can you drink from this cup?”
“Yes, I can” Tolton replied in Latin. He was being sent to St. Joseph Church, a Black parish in his hometown of Quincy, Illinois.
Black Catholics in Quincy were overjoyed. Father Tolton also won the respect of Irish and German Catholics who crossed the color line to hear his inspiring sermons, teaching, and wonderful singing voice.
But in his first two years, unrelenting harassment came from Catholic priests and even Protestant ministers threatened by his popularity, especially with White churchgoers supporting Father Tolton’s church financially.
Pressure intensified until Father Tolton was forced out of Quincy to the diocese of Chicago, where he was assigned to a poor, struggling Black Catholic parish on the south end.
The pressures did not stop as Father Tolton worked tirelessly to move St. Monica Church from borrowed space in a church basement to a storefront. Financial support from Mother Katharine Drexel (later canonized as a saint) helped build St. Monica Church and school.
Father Tolton would later write in a letter to Drexel, “I shall work and pull at it as long as God gives me life, for I am beginning to see that I have powers and principalities to resist anywhere and everywhere I go.”
He spoke throughout the nation, and officiated at the first National Black Catholic Conference held January 1–4, 1889, in Washington, DC, where Father Tolton and delegates met with President Grover Cleveland.
Reviewing the life and cause of Venerable Augustus Tolton, I wondered how a Millennial might view this saint-to-be. I found my answer speaking to Stefanie Miles, a Venerable Father Augustus Tolton Ambassador in Washington, DC.
Tolton’s appeal for Miles doesn’t come from the almost mythical stories about his faith, endurance, and prodigious intellect, but from his Christ-centered humanity and spirituality.
After nearly a decade as an ambassador, Miles still wonders how Tolton trusted God and submitted to his destiny under the unrelenting societal and personal pressures he faced daily. Connecting with that, she said, gives her—and can give others—a spiritual role model to help address human frailties while building a closer relationship with God.
“I identify myself with the human side of his life,” Miles said. “We may not have had the same struggles, but we struggled all the same. I want people to identify with his actual human story. I want people to understand where he came from as a person.”
Miles became an ambassador in 2015, after being “volun-told” to join the group by family elders. “I just went with the process,” she said, glad now that she did.
Early on, Miles learned what she calls “Disney” or “CliffsNotes” versions of the life of the man recognized as the nation’s first African American Catholic priest. Growing closer to him, she began to learn and feel his heart and wounds.
“He literally worked himself to death,” Miles said of Father Tolton, who at the age of 43, collapsed from heat stroke while walking home from the train station during a Chicago heat wave and later died.
“I have a lot of friends who are priests,” Miles continued. “We have to take care of them, especially African American priests who often lack resources. People are constantly pulling at them, as they did with Jesus, saying ‘help me, heal me!’”
Miles said she can imagine the stress and inner doubts Father Tolton must have felt throughout his life, before and after he became a priest, for it is a burden shouldered by many youth today.
“Look we’ve got to make our mark in the church,” she said. “The older generation needs to step aside, but not just drop us as we try to find our way” to accept church leadership roles, and even question and leave the church for awhile, if necessary.
“The younger generation also needs to step up,” and even discern if they are being called to a religious vocation.
Miles says Father Tolton has re-ignited her interest in studying languages, and deepened her reverence for Catholic practices that he loved and said empowered him, such as Adoration and the Eucharist.
“We need role models.” And for Miles that’s Venerable Augustus Tolton.
Joann Stevens is a freelance writer and program specialist promoting unsung and unknown African American jazz, faith, and cultural innovators who have influenced democracy and racial justice for the Common Good.
I was planning to write a short blog about the Silent or Traditionalist Generation, the name given to those born and coming of age between 1928 and 1945. They would follow the Greatest Generation and precede the Baby Boomers. To set the stage, I thought I would consider the cost of living in contrast to what it is today.
A loaf of bread was 10 cents or less. While Wonder Bread was a special treat, just having bread of any kind was a wonder during the Great Depression.
Thinking about bread, I began to search for photos that were taken of people during the Great Depression. There are a lot of photos of bread lines, but for the most part Black people are absent from these photos. I know from recorded history, as well as stories my own family told, that Black people were not the recipients of government programs created to ease the pain of economic hardship. It was as if White suffering was the tragedy of the times and Black suffering was business as usual—nothing new and, therefore, unworthy of sympathy or amelioration.
My family was in Memphis during these hard times, and though everyone suffered during the Great Depression, my people—in the specific and in the general sense—suffered a Greater Depression.In this time of great need, support was about who got fed first, and the prevailing rule was, “Last hired, first fired.”
Times were so hard that just keeping warm when the weather was cold was too much to expect. My Daddy’s mother lived in a literal shack in the Orange Mound community in Memphis. In a struggle to keep his mother and aunt from freezing, my Daddy, in his late teens and early twenties, would follow the train tracks to pick up pieces of coal that fell from the train cars and take them to my grandmother’s shack to fire the stove. One night, while scavenging for pieces of coal, someone with a shotgun shot my Daddy in the back.
As I recall how the old wound looked, the shot must have come from a distance and at an angle because it didn’t kill him. I could put my finger in the shiny sideways hole. My Mother used to get angry while telling the story about the pellets or buck shots that remained under Daddy’s skin.
I say that Black people experienced the Greater Depression because, while even low-level jobs were scarce for White people, they were non-existent for Black people who were not only trying to scratch out a living, but also trying to keep their heads down for fear of being lynched or enduring some other kind of cruelty. My family and other families of Black people who survived the Greater Depression truly are heroes.
These Silent Generation heroes would be inextricably tied to the spirit of the times of the Greater Depression. In them, one can sense the quiet strength and overwhelming desire to be and do more with the relative largesse following the Great Depression.
Much of what we know about Black history is the story of how the Silent Generation did not stay silent, taking action to change the trajectory of a people by organizing to fight for the civil rights of all people, training up the younger generation and seeing to it that their elders in the Greatest Generation, in particular, were afforded the rights and dignity too long denied them for their own contributions.
A few of the Silent Generation who raised their voices for civil rights:
Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman (1937–1990) was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, and reared in nearby Canton. A Catholic convert and the only child of an African American physician and educator, Sister Thea was destined to inspire the Catholic world as a singer and spiritual reconciler.
A young Sister Thea Bowman (Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration | fspa.org/theabowman)
At age 15, Sister Thea became the first and only African American to join the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, a religious order in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Their missionary work at Holy Child Jesus School and Church in her hometown of Canton, Mississippi, had inspired Sister Thea’s Catholic faith. Her love of African American culture and music guided how she expressed that faith.
In her essay, The Gift of African American Sacred Song, Sister Thea wrote, “From the African Mother continent, African men and women…carried the African gift and treasure of Sacred Song, Black sacred song is soulful… Black sacred song has been at once a source and an expression of Black faith, spirituality and devotion. By song, our people have called the Spirit into our hearts, homes, churches and communities.”
As an educator, writer, singer, evangelist, and cultural bridge-builder, Sister Thea used music to cross religious and social borders at places in the North and Jim Crow South that were not always welcoming to Black Catholics. Succumbing to her pleas to become a nun, her father had warned, “They’re not going to like you up there” at that White religious order in an all-White midwestern city. She replied, “I’ll make them like me.” She took that mission to the world.
After earning a B.A. in English from Viterbo College in LaCrosse, and masters and doctorate degrees in English from the Catholic University of America, Sister Thea taught at both universities, as well as at Holy Child Jesus School in Canton. Teaching at Xavier University in New Orleans, the nation’s only historically black Catholic university, she inspired Black students and seminarians to share their love and rich cultural heritage with the church and helped found the Institute for Black Catholic Studies. She coaxed White Catholics to accept the gifts God offered through their Black brothers and sisters, and to those who viewed Afrocentric liturgy and styles of worship as “not Catholic,” to open their hearts and minds.
At the height of the civil rights movement in the 70s, the growing diversity in Catholic liturgy and spiritual justice movements emboldened Sister Thea’s tireless efforts to advance cultural diversity and inclusion in the Church. She traveled and spoke in Africa, gaining new insights, friends, and mentors. Sister Thea began wearing African clothing and became an intercultural leader for religious and laity. She helped found the National Black Sisters’ Conference to support African American women in religious life and, in 1978, she accepted an appointment by then-Bishop Bernard Brunini to direct the Office of Intercultural Affairs for the Diocese of Jackson (Mississippi).
Sister Thea Bowman later in her ministry (Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration | fspa.org/theabowman)
A 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace in 1987 introduced Sister Thea’s social justice Gospel to millions and, in June 1989, she became the first African American woman to address the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. She awakened the bishops to the need for inclusion and unity, asking, “What does it mean to be Black and Catholic?” Her initial response to the question was to sing the Negro spiritual, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”
She went on to explain that being Black and Catholic “means I come to my church fully functioning…I bring myself, my Black self, all that I am, all that I have, all that I hope to become; I bring my whole history, my traditions, my experience, my culture, my African American song and dance, gesture and movement and teaching and preaching and healing and responsibility as a gift to the church.”
But, she told the bishops, the faith witness of Black Catholics is too often denied and devalued, creating feelings of alienation and anxiety in Black Catholics. She closed her address by having the bishops, priests, and all present link arms and sing, “We Shall Overcome,” explaining the history of the song and physical manifestation, and the importance of spiritual leadership and solidarity.
Even today, the Catholic University of America’s recent “Sister Thea Bowman Committee Report” is being used to advance racial equity and, in 2022, the university named a campus street for her. That same year, Georgetown University renamed a chapel in her honor. Similarly, as part of its recognition of the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington, Howard University dedicated the Thea Bowman Student Center on its campus in a celebration with Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the first African American cardinal in the history of the American Catholic Church.
Before succumbing to breast cancer at age 52, Sister Thea annually fulfilled some 100 speaking and preaching engagements, produced the recordings, “Sister Thea: Songs of My People” and “Round the Glory Manger, Christmas Spirituals,” and helped develop the “Lead Me, Guide Me” Black Catholic hymnal.
“She had her spirituals, the music that was so beautiful,” recalled a classmate Sister Maria Lang in an interview with the Catholic News Herald. “Most of us had been living with little or no contact with anyone of African descent. But her voice was so beautiful, it was just a very rich experience.”
Sister Mary Ann Gschwind, Sister Thea’s roommate at the Catholic University of America during the summer of 1966, added, “It took a lot of nerve for her to join our community. I don’t think I could have done it if the situation was reversed.”
Joann Stevens is a freelance writer and program specialist promoting unsung and unknown African American jazz, faith, and cultural innovators who have influenced democracy and racial justice for the Common Good.
Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, Gen Zers. These labels have become popular ways to define generations. Before the common use of these labels, there wasn’t much public knowledge and discussion about who was born when and what their attitudes and values might be. Other than the term “Lost Generation,” the first popular label I recall is Baby Boomers. It was coined to describe the huge increase in population following WWII and the Korean War.
In addition to the term “Baby Boomers,” perhaps the publication that popularized the naming of generations was Tom Brokaw’s 1998 book titled The Greatest Generation. As a result of this book, there was a wave of nostalgia for war heroes and respect for patriots.
Naming generations promotes the idea that people born during an approximately 20-year span of time might have attitudes, characteristics, values, and sensibilities more similar to one another than to those born 20 years before or after. Because they experienced the same impactful events and presumably contributed to the spirit of the times in which they came of age, they may have a similar way of seeing the world and weighing the consequences of major changes in their environment.
As the naming of generations goes, I think that there is more integrity in the naming of Baby Boomers than the subsequent names given to generations. The label “Baby Boomers” is a short-hand description of the fact that there was a population surge during a particular span of time. The critical point I want to make is that the naming was based on a demographic fact that can be easily accessed.
It seems that the more recent generational names have creative hooks helping them to become sticky. These names capture the attention of those researching and writing about generations. The researchers begin with a hypothesis or an idea about what they think might be significant and distinctive about those born and coming of age during a particular time period. The name captures the interest of the public and over time enough people agree that this new generation is, indeed, different than any before.
I don’t think that there is anything wrong with the short-hand names for generational identity. What I wonder about is whether the names are not solely descriptive but are also prescriptive, and, therefore, could have an outsized influence on the way people see themselves.
The impact of the generational naming will not be the same for all within the designated group. However, some may adapt their attitude and lifestyle to the descriptions they hear about their group. They appropriate the descriptions as guides to understand and define their sense of self rather than relying on their personal experiences, unique backgrounds, special characteristics and, most of all, their own sense of agency.
Seeing oneself through the prism of how one’s generational cohort is described may allow one to take less responsibility for internal reasoning and personal control. Those who see themselves this way may get a pass for the way they react to their environment, and the way they respond to their life’s circumstances because there is consensus that the events that occurred during their time of development have influenced their way of interacting with the world, their way of being.
In conversations with people who are not Millennials or Gen Zers, it’s common to hear excuses for behaviors that may not have been seen as acceptable by past generations. With a metaphorical shrug, members of a particular generation are given a pass, attributing their behavior to their generation and not to the individual. Individuals are not responsible because they are influenced by events beyond their control. Rather than being held accountable, they are supported at best and pitied at worst.
As I come to the close of my thinking on this, it seems that generational labels and naming of signs in astrology have similarities. Both rely on the time of birth to ascribe characteristics or traits. Both are ostensibly descriptive but for some are prescriptive. Just as there are skeptics about astrology, I think there might need to be more skeptics about naming and describing generations, especially when the names come before some of the cohort comes of age.
Henriette DeLille (Image credit: National Black Catholic Congress)
Venerable Henriette DeLille (1812–1862) was portrayed by actress Vanessa Williams in The Courage to Love, a romanticized, historical drama that highlighted the Quadroon Balls and system of plaçage that DeLille and generations of her ancestors were born into and practiced. Accepted in North American French and Spanish slave colonies, plaçage allowed wealthy White men to live double lives—one as a committed family man with a White wife and children on a plantation, the other in a household with a mixed-race concubine and children. These unions could last for a year, decades, or until death.
DeLille was a fourth-generation free woman, born and raised under plaçage. Despite a complexion so light that she could have easily passed for White, she never opted for this as the rest of her family did. She entered into plaçage for a short time and bore two children who both died in infancy. By her early 20s, DeLille’s deepening faith and encounters with God compelled her to reject plaçage and encourage other mixed-race women to do likewise.
DeLille wrote in French on the flyleaf of a book centered on the Eucharist, “I believe in God. I hope in God. I love. I want to live and die for God.” Her work on behalf of God is evident in the religious order she founded, Sisters of the Holy Family, and the historical New Orleans Tour the order created to educate people about the life and works of their foundress and order. (The Sisters of the Holy Family are the second-oldest surviving congregation of African American religious, with the oldest being the Oblate Sisters of Providence founded by the Venerable Mary Lange.)
Using funds from the sale of property, her inheritance, and loans, DeLille created programs to teach Black children the Bible and academics, founded the first Catholic home for the elderly in the United States, and fed and cared for the poor.
In 1881, the order purchased the Orleans Theater property that includes the former Orleans Ballroom, the site of the Quadroon Balls, converting it into a school and convent, with the ballroom itself serving as the chapel for the sisters.
Julia Greeley (Image credit: National Black Catholic Congress)
Julia Greeley(c. 1840–1918) was born into slavery in Hannibal, Missouri, sometime between 1833 and 1848. She came to Colorado to care for the family of first territorial governor, William Gilpin, and it was here that she became known as Denver’s Angel of Mercy and Missionary of the Sacred Heart. Greeley’s life and legacy align with that of the unnamed woman that Jesus recognized and honored in the story of the widow’s mite (Luke 21:1-4) for anonymously giving all she had to serve God and others.
A formerly enslaved person blinded in one eye by an enslaver, Greeley arrived in Denver around 1879 or 1880 and was noted for freely giving of her faith, resources, prayer, and strength to all—regardless of race, ethnicity, or faith—until her death in 1918. When her meager resources as a domestic worker failed to provide, she begged for the needy, pulling a little red wagon containing food, toys, clothes, or even a mattress for someone in need. She never sought recognition for her acts of mercy and, sensitive to the possible negative consequences that might come to needy White people receiving assistance from a poor Black woman, she gave anonymously, leaving gifts at night.
A convert to Catholicism, Greeley was baptized at Sacred Heart Church on June 26, 1880. Neither poverty nor past trauma deterred her from evangelizing. Her devotion to the Sacred Heart (e.g., a Catholic devotion to Jesus’s love and compassion for all humanity) led her to attend daily mass at her parish Sacred Heart Church, pray for the Denver community, give alms to the poor, care for scores of children, sing in a small choir at Fort Logan, and specially minister to Denver’s fire fighters.
The Capuchin Franciscans of Denver recognized Greeley’s good works by accepting her into their fraternity as a secular Franciscan in 1901. She died in 1918 on the day of the Feast of the Sacred Heart (June 7) and was buried in the habit of the Third Order of Franciscans as Sr. Elizabeth of the Secular Franciscans. A Third Order is a group of unordained people who live by the ideals of a religious order. Jesuit Fr. Eugene Murphy said of Greeley, “Here was the secret of her influence. She had taken Christ literally, as had the Poverello of Assisi. Like him, she had given away all to the poor and had gone about making melody in her heart unto the Lord.”
At her funeral service, it took five hours for people from all walks of life to view her body and pay their respects. Denver organizations like The Julia Greeley Home for needy women continue to carry her name and mission.
Sources:
Colorado Encyclopedia, Julia Greeley (History Colorado)
Joann Stevens is a freelance writer and program specialist promoting unsung and unknown African American jazz, faith, and cultural innovators who have influenced democracy and racial justice for the Common Good.
Gwen Dungy 