Category Archives: initiative

At the Right Place at the Right Time

Posted on March 28, 2024 by | Leave a comment

It doesn’t take a retrospective view for me to know that I’ve often been at the right place at the right time. I thought of this recently when I was concerned about having enough time to get across town for an appointment. As it turned out, I was lucky that I had not gotten on the highway when planned because I would have just been stuck in traffic until a disabled vehicle blocking the ramp at my exit was removed. A small thing, but I was where I was supposed to be at the right time. I was taking care of my prior business rather than sitting in traffic waiting to exit the highway.

These days, even when small plans don’t turn out just the way I intended, I stop to search for and acknowledge the good that comes from being in that place at that time. I have found that attempting to force things to happen the way I want them to at the time I want them to happen often leads to undue frustration and regret. Allowing the unexpected to reveal the prize inside has been one of the most important lessons I’ve learned and one of the many joys of my life.

In my youth and adolescent years, when I had little control over my care and conditions, I now know that the circumstances that prevailed during these times instilled in me the desire to push harder and the resilience to reach higher. Role models—both positive and negative—provided examples I needed in order to become a caring and responsible adult. The years of wanting to be in some other place with different people and longing to be anybody but myself instilled within me the kind of empathy that has become a lifelong value. Although I didn’t think it then, I now know I needed to be in those places during those times.

When I think about the jobs I have had during my long career, it is evident to me that opportunities were realized when the time was right and I was ripe for the position. Graduating from college with a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in counseling, I was not optimistic about my chances of a full-time job doing what I wanted to do. I had no desire to teach after a negative experience as a student teacher. I desperately wanted to be a counselor and knew this would be the right career for me.

After three years of teaching, one of the counselors in the high school where I was teaching went on maternity leave and I was asked to take the role during her absence. Getting out of the classroom and into the counseling office was a “sweet Jesus” moment for me. I felt ready for the role of counselor. I knew that I was at the right place at the right time.

As it turned out, this short stint in the role of counselor opened the door for my next position. Moving to a new city to support my husband’s desire to get his MBA, I had no prospects for a job as a counselor.

As luck would have it, the local community college was less than ten minutes from our house. As I’m remembering it now, it was a Saturday, and I may have been out running errands. On a whim, I drove to the college, walked into the administration building and asked the front desk if there was anyone in the counseling office.

I was directed to the second floor of the administration building. The only person in the office was the Director of Counseling. I explained that I was new in town and was curious about community college counseling since I had a degree in counseling. The Director and I had a nice conversation and during our conversation the Director let me know that he was looking to hire a counselor and I should consider applying for the position.

I served as a counselor at this community college for the next ten years. There is no doubt that I was at the right place at the right time.

I think many of us have these same moments. For me, these moments are precious gifts for which I’m always very thankful.

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Posted in fate, initiative, reflection

The Inspirational Six, Final Post: Venerable Augustus Tolton

Posted on March 14, 2024 by | 1 comment

Guest post by Joann Stevens
(Read previous post on Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman)

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.

.     .     .

Sources

Additional Resources

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.

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Posted in faith, guest post, Identity, initiative, integrity, Leadership, Race & Ethnicity

Ahead of Her Time

Posted on March 7, 2024 by | 2 comments
Anna Julia Cooper

Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964) put no limits on the intellectual potential of Black people, Black women in particular. Her own intellectual and educational achievements are a testament to her firm belief that women’s opportunities for learning and education should not be less than or different than men based on assumptions about women’s capabilities.

 I’m particularly drawn to the life of Anna Julia Cooper because she did it all: was a leading Black spokeswoman; held leadership in women’s organizations; founded the first chapter of the YWCA Camp Fire Girls for Black girls; served as principal and teacher in the “renowned Dunbar High School in Washington, DC;” started a night school for working people to attend college; and authored a seminal book on Black feminism, A Voice from the South.

Even as she focused her energy and attention on cultivating the potential of marginalized people, she also continued to work on her own education. In 1924, Cooper received her Ph.D. from the University of Paris, becoming only the fourth Black woman in the United States to earn a doctorate degree.

Despite these extraordinary accomplishments of a Black woman born in the South and formerly a slave, what captivates me most about Dr. Cooper is that she didn’t seek attention. Dr. Paul Cooke, one of her biographers, wrote that she chose the “lesser light.”

She was dedicated to a larger cause than herself and refrained from crediting her own achievements. An example of Dr. Cooper’s humility is what Dr. Mary Helen Washington shared in her Introduction to Cooper’s Book in the Shomburg Library Collection of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers.

“In 1982, when Louise Hutchinson, staff historian at the Smithsonian Institution, completed her biography of Cooper, she called for an official Smithsonian car and hand-delivered the copy of the biography to Mrs. Regia Haywood Bronson, the eldest of the five children Anna Cooper had adopted in 1915.

“Then in her late seventies, Mrs. Bronson took the book from Hutchinson, and holding it to her breast, she rocked back and forth with tears streaming down her face, but not saying a word. When Hutchinson asked her why she was crying, Bronson said, ‘Nobody ever told me Sis Annie was important.’”

Yes, Anna Julia Cooper was important, indeed, in advocating for social justice and equality of rights for all people and the education of Black women, in particular.  

Living to be 105 years old, she lived to see a celebration of Black History Month and Women’s History Month. She would have been pleased to see the theme of the 2024 Women’s History Month—Women Who Advocate for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

Sources:

Anna Julia Cooper Project: cooperproject.org/about-anna-julia-cooper

Introduction in the Schomburg Library Collection of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers: Cooper, Anna Julia. A Voice From the South. (United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1988).

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Posted in collaboration, empathy, energy, initiative, Leadership, Race & Ethnicity, respect, women

Remembering Betty

Posted on February 29, 2024 by | 1 comment

Since she was always in charge, I’m sure she told Gabriel it was time to blow his horn for her arrival because she had squeezed every ounce of living out of this life and then some at age 96.  

Elizabeth B Rawlins
Elizabeth B. Rawlins

Dean Emerita Elizabeth B. Rawlins of Simmons College mentored countless young people who thanked her by becoming leaders in their fields and role models for those who followed them.

Beyond Simmons College, Dean Rawlins was the sage who guided Black professionals in the National Association for Women in Education (NAWE) as they sought recognition through leadership to have their voices heard and their talents recognized.

To me, she was “Betty”—friend and role model. While I generally respect the day for family privacy, I called Betty at her home in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard on Christmas Day 2023.  I could hear the familiar sounds of the family gathering. I could tell by the joy and cheerfulness in her voice that she was elated and ecstatically happy as she told me who was at the house and what they were doing. I could picture the scene, and a feeling of rightness and peace overwhelmed me. I was so glad that I had been led to speak with Betty for what I felt might be the last time.

After we ended our call, I sat for a while and with a smile I recalled good times Charles and I had with Betty and Keith, her late husband, and mutual friends over the years:

  • African Meeting House in Boston
  • Betty’s rolls and Keith’s stuffed mushrooms
  • Inkwell Beach
  • The ferry crossings
  • Gingerbread houses
  • Great seafood
  • Annual Valentine’s Day in Florida all wearing red
  • Fireworks on the grounds of the Episcopal Church
  • Chilmark Chocolates
  • Literary readings on summer nights
  • Trips to Edgartown
  • Oak Bluffs famous-people spotting
  • Art and bookstore browsing

She had it all. She lived her life with confidence. She loved Simmons College and Simmons College loved her back. She loved and was proud of her family. They were proud of her and loved her. She left this life fulfilled.

I’m so grateful to have known you, Betty.

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Posted in energy, Higher Education, initiative, integrity, Leadership, Race & Ethnicity, reflection, respect, women

The Inspirational Six, Part 4: Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman

Posted on February 15, 2024 by | 1 comment

Guest post by Joann Stevens
(Read previous post: Venerable Henriette DeLille and Servant of God Julia Greeley)

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 in habit
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 with arms upraised and in African attire before a congregation
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.”

Sources

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.

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Posted in faith, guest post, Identity, initiative, integrity, Leadership, Race & Ethnicity, women

The Inspirational Six, Part 3: Venerable Henriette DeLille and Servant of God Julia Greeley

Posted on February 1, 2024 by | 2 comments

Guest post by Joann Stevens
(Read previous post: Venerable Mary Lange)

Henriette DeLille
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. 

Sources:

Julia Greeley
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:

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.

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Posted in faith, guest post, Identity, initiative, integrity, Leadership, Race & Ethnicity, women

Where Do We Go From Here?

Posted on January 11, 2024 by | 1 comment

Guest post by Kaaryn McCall

As we start a new year, particularly this new year, it is perhaps good to ask, “Where do we go from here?” The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., began bringing his 1967 Southern Christian Leadership Conference address by that title to a close with the following words we would do well to heed today:

“The road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. And there will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair…. But difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.”

King’s book of that same title that year was aptly subtitled with the question “Chaos or Community?” This is a choice with which we are always faced and, as we enter 2024 that is, among other things, a presidential election year, and as we near the nation’s 250th anniversary even as some talk of the possibility of a second civil war, I, for one, choose community.

Too often, this can seem like an amorphous concept, so it’s helpful to understand the Beloved Community that was King’s ultimate aim, as reflected in remarks as early as 1956, following the Montgomery Bus Boycott: “The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community.”*

From the religious perspective, King saw Beloved Community as the wholly achievable goal of realizing the kingdom of God on earth,† “in which all human beings ha[ve] value in and of themselves, and [a]re subjects worthy of love.”‡ This restored community is the ideal of creation—God’s intention for all of humanity‡ living together in an “inescapable network of mutuality.” †

Perhaps more concretely, and from a more universal perspective, this Beloved Community is one in which:

“poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood…. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”*

Achieving such community requires transformation on many levels. In his further remarks following the bus boycott, King noted, “It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age.*

It is important to note that King did not believe Beloved Community would be devoid of conflicts, but that these could always be resolved peacefully,* noting that “true peace is not merely the absence of tension [but] the presence of justice.” †

silhouette of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr with the words "BUILDING THE BELOVED COMMUNITY" and a colorful illustration with many components, including a river, trees, hearts, stars, hands, people, rainbow, and various decorative elements

So, “Where do we go from here?”

In a world increasingly divided, let us seek to build increasing levels of trust across difference.†

In a world increasingly concerned with domestic and international terrorism, let us embrace the fact that “love [is the] most potent instrument available in humanity’s quest for peace and security.”‡

In a world increasingly complex and intertwined, let us seek to understand the “enemy-neighbor” as more than a given action on their part.‡

In a world where prejudices continue to manifest themselves, let us seek a true conception of self instead of “self-deception and … neurosis stemming from repressed truth.”‡

In a world of zero-sum games, let us demonstrate that there is no need to fear one’s own loss when advocating for justice. (As a popular meme puts it, “Equal rights for others does not mean fewer rights for you. It’s not pie.”)

In a world still plagued with brokenness, separation, suspicion, and deadly conflicts, let us find our points of commonality and shared humanity.

The choice between chaos and community remains for each of us individually and collectively. May this new year and MLK Day be about more than just platitudes. Let us answer the call to action and walk on together not in blind optimism, but an intentional hope and “audacious faith in the future.” Let us not fall into despair as a few loud voices are amplified across various media but recall how far we have come and set forth with renewed purpose to building Beloved Community.

SOURCES

† Hunt, C. Anthony. The Beloved Community Toolkit.

‡ Hunt, C. Anthony. Blessed are the Peacemakers: A Theological Analysis of the Thought of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr. Lima, OH: Wyndham Hall Press, 2005.

* The King Center. “The King Philosophy.” thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy

Kaaryn McCall is a communications consultant who, in addition to supporting Dr. Dungy, works with nonprofit organizations across the social justice spectrum to most effectively leverage strategic communications to support their missions. Connect on LinkedIn

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Posted in energy, faith, guest post, initiative, integrity, Leadership, Race & Ethnicity, reflection, respect

The Inspirational Six, Part 1: Venerable Pierre Toussaint

Posted on December 14, 2023 by | 1 comment

Guest post by Joann Stevens

In a series of posts, I’d like you to meet six Black Catholics from the 19th and 20th centuries on the road to sainthood in the global Catholic Church: Venerable Pierre Toussaint; Venerable Henriette DeLille; Venerable Augustus Tolton; Servant of God Mary Lange; Servant of God Julia Greeley; and Servant of God Thea Bowman. Ordinary people inspired by faith to serve the Common Good, they helped build and transform American Catholicism, advanced a democracy they couldn’t enjoy, and upheld Jesus’ commandment to “Love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

Inspiration can be hard to find when celebrity and socioeconomic status define influence more often than character. But sainthood is an equalizer. Saints inspire people of all faiths or no faith. Saints are rarely sexy, beautiful, rich, or celebrated. They endure hardship, poverty, and social rejection. They sacrifice their bodies— sometimes literally, more often figuratively—to serve as agents of God’s righteousness and unconditional love. Saints don’t wear Chanel or Brioni but lift the spirit higher than a well-cut garment as they model essential elements of humanity: Love and Hope.

Pierre, Juliette, and Euphemia Toussaint as painted by Anthony Meucci, 1825
Pierre, Juliette, and Euphemia Toussaint as painted by Anthony Meucci, 1825

Venerable Pierre Toussaint (1766–1853) took his surname from the Haitian general Francois-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, a Black enslaved person turned enslaver turned slave liberator. Venerable Pierre Toussaint was trained as a house servant in his native Saint Domingue (Haiti). He was taught to read and write in French and English and had free reign of his enslavers’ library. Along with his sister Rosalie, his aunt, and two others, Toussaint arrived in New York in 1787, the property of Jacque Berard who had fled the Haitian rebellion with his family. Berard returned to Haiti to secure his property but died there of pleurisy in 1791, nearly destitute.

At the time, the United States was facing its first financial crisis. Although enslaved, hardship seemed to sharpen Toussaint’s resolve and entrepreneurialism. Apprenticed as a hairdresser, his success enabled him to support the Berard family and household, caring for Berard’s widow, Marie, until her death in 1807, after which he gained his freedom. Toussaint’s success also enabled him to purchase the freedom of his sister—whose daughter he would adopt upon Rosalie’s death—as well as the freedom of others who were enslaved. Among those was Juliette Noel, a Haitian woman Toussaint married in 1811. That same year he bought a house in Manhattan to shelter Black orphans and teach them trades.

Hairdressing was Toussaint’s profession, but his intellect, faith, and love for humanity established his character.  In addition to working more than 12 hours a day dressing hair, followed by household chores and community service to feed the hungry and nurse the sick, Toussaint was a daily communicant of St. Peter’s Church on Barclay Street, attending Mass at 6:00 a.m. He served the public another 36 years after gaining his freedom and was known to quote from the Sermon on the Mount in French. “The Beatitudes seemed to have found a way into his heart,” wrote his first biographer.

Toussaint inspired all who knew or heard of him. His clients were elite society women. Among them the wife and daughter of Alexander Hamilton. They welcomed him into their estates, sought his counsel and admired his kindness, piety, and charitable works. Many were Protestant socialites like Mary Anna Sawyer Schuyler, a close friend who called him “my Saint Pierre.” Under their patronage, Toussaint earned as much as $1,000 a client annually at a time when the average annual salary was $65.

Pierre and Juliette Toussaint spread their philanthropy widely and diversely, creating a credit bureau and employment agency to help Black people and support the resettlement of Haitian immigrants to New York; founding the First New York City Catholic School for Black children; helping raise funds for Elizabeth Seton’s Sisters of Charity to open an orphanage in New York City even though it only served White children; funding the nation’s first religious order of Black nuns, the Oblate Sisters of Providence; providing aid for retired priests and destitute travelers; and contributing to the founding and building of St. Patrick’s Church that became St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

As his health failed with age, friends pressed the elderly Toussaint to retire and enjoy his success. He responded, “I have enough for myself, but if I stop working, I have not enough for others.” His last recorded words, two days before his death, were, “God is with me.” Asked if he wanted anything, he replied, “Not on this earth.”

Pierre Toussaint died at age 87, two years after his beloved Juliette. Friends and media praised this man defined by his faith, heart, and character and not external circumstances.

An act of racism once barred Toussaint from attending the St. Patrick’s Church he helped found. In a testament to God’s grace and remembrance of Toussaint’s servanthood, Cardinal John O’Connor arranged for Toussaint’s reinterment in 1959 to a vault under the altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. He is the only layperson buried among bishops and cardinals.

Sources: George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Ten Facts About the American Economy in the 18th Century; Archdiocese of New York; Archways, the online Magazine of the Archdiocese of New York; Cathecist Cafe. 

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.

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