I don’t take my civil rights and my right to vote for granted. In this current election cycle, I fear that these precious hard-won rights may be in danger as they teeter precariously on the worst instincts of those who seek power at any cost.
Along with other groups, I have experienced legalized discrimination and I know what it can do to the human spirit.
In the upcoming iteration of democracy in action, it’s not just those of us who are the historic and presumed targets of discrimination who are at risk: It is all of us who are shocked and dismayed by the overt acts of those who want to turn back time in their vision for the nation.
We must not be distracted by the noise created by the theater and drama of the political process. We must keep the goal of an inclusive, multiracial citizenry with hard-won rights in our sights as we vote and encourage others to vote for those with a record of enacting policies that align with our basic human values.
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.”
If assessed by the amount of media attention and early campaigning by the major political parties, the approaching national election is an important marker in the destiny of our nation. Much foreshadowing and numerous negative predictions have already been put forth for the 2024 election. News headlines and excerpts from some of the candidates’ rhetoric promote fear for some and cynicism for others. It’s difficult to find something to be optimistic about regardless of the outcome of the 2024 election.
I’ve always put faith in the coming generation. I believe that they are the wise ones who find ways to see beyond the mess we find ourselves in when we abandon ethical principles and compassion. They make us hear them by any means necessary and I’ve always supported them in their efforts. Recently, I’ve begun to question if we can still count on the young to save us.
I want to ignore the polls about possible changes in the political leanings of younger voters because there are a lot of variables to consider regarding the integrity of the polling process and the interpretation of the results. Recent history has shown that younger voters have more progressive ideals, and therefore lean more toward the Democratic party. Articles using poll results as the focus, however, show that where the Democratic party leads among younger voters, the margin is extremely small, and in some cases the Republican party is ahead by a small margin. When I read that many men, in particular, admire the Republican candidate because of his machismo, I begin to wonder if we’re losing what has been so precious about young voters—optimism.
I want to believe that the current polarizing environment on so many issues would ignite and excite young voters to stand up for the ideals of the nation. However, it seems that in the current environment, it may seem impossible or futile to express noble ideals and meet the projected challenges with openness, compassion, courage, and integrity.
I don’t want to lose hope. What can open the door to optimism when there are so many forces pushing against it? What voice and whose words have broken through before?
“If I remain hopeful about the future, it’s in large part because I’ve learned to place my faith in my fellow citizens, especially those of the next generation, whose conviction in the equal worth of all people seems to come as second nature, and who insist on making real those principles that their parents and teachers told them were true but that they perhaps never fully believed themselves. More than anyone else, my book is for those young people—an invitation to once again remake the world, and to bring about, through hard work, determination, and a big dose of imagination, an America that finally aligns with all that is best in us.
“What I can say for certain is that I’m not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America—not just for the sake of future generations of Americans but for all of humankind.”
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.
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
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 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.
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.
What is it about the lives of overcomers that inspire awe, even action?
Learning about the four African American women among the six on the road to sainthood in the Catholic Church, I was in awe of their resistance to personal trials or societal turmoil dampening their faith, or defeating or defining their work to build a multicultural society and Church of love and hope. The women will be presented in chronological order over the coming weeks, concluding with Sr. Thea Bowman, whose evangelism I was privileged to witness at a revival service in Washington, D.C.
Four Women, composed by jazz pianist and singer Nina Simone, narrates trials of colorism and enslavement faced by women. The stories of the four women on the road to sainthood show us the power of love and hope as we strive to live and serve Christ in what the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called “…a genuine conversion of heart, a conversion that will compel change and the reform of our institutions and society,” in its 2018 pastoral letter, “Open Wide Our Hearts.”
Venerable Mary Lange
Venerable Mary Lange (1784–1882) immigrated to the United States in the midst of American slavery to achieve the seemingly impossible. In 1818, she and a friend opened a home school to teach Black children in Baltimore. At the time, the city was home to some 1,500 French-speaking Haitian refugees—500 of them Black—fleeing social conflicts in Haiti and France. As a border state, Maryland neither prohibited nor encouraged educating Black children.
The women suffered many indignities, ranging from public insult to Catholic parishes refusing to let them receive communion as they pursued their mission. Lange took in washing to support Saint Frances Academy, which officially became the first Catholic school for Black children in the United States in 1828. The following year, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the religious order Lange founded, became “the first successful Roman Catholic sisterhood in the world established by women of African descent,” according to Oblate history. Nearly 200 years later, Mother Lange’s educational and spiritual legacy continues in Baltimore.
Born Elizabeth C. Lange in either Santiago de Cuba or Saint-Domingue, Lange was a French-speaking Creole woman whose plantation owner grandfather, Mardoche Lange, sent his family to Cuba to escape the Haitian Revolution. She once described herself as “French to my soul,” and allegedly immigrated to the United States in resistance to an 1808 law requiring non-Spanish residents of Cuba to make a loyalty oath to the Spanish king.
Most importantly, Lange rejected justifications for slavery made by some Catholic priests and church leaders who sought to appease wealthy White donors. She knew slavery was wrong and believed keys to Black liberation included spiritual and academic education. Seeking a White man in America who shared her beliefs, Lange found Father James Hector Nicholas Joubert, a Sulpician order priest and former French soldier and expat from Haiti who became an advocate and spiritual advisor until his death.
Mother Lange taught at Saint Frances Academy, served as housekeeper to the Sulpician Seminary, extended education to Black adults before and after the Civil War, and managed to overcome social violence and poverty right up until her death. Help always seemed to arrive providentially in the nick of time.
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 