Before the emancipation of the slaves in the United States, great difficulties prevented the Catholic Church from benefiting the slaves, especially in those parts where the Church had no adherents and no freedom to act. The Church had but a limited number of clergy and small means. The most of the South was predominantly Protestant and in some sections, penal laws were in force against Catholics. In many States laws were enacted against the instruction of slaves in any manner whatever.
Notwithstanding these obstacles, we find Catholic schools in Washington and Baltimore educating Negro children as early as 1829.[502] The Rt. Rev. John England, the first Catholic Bishop of Charleston, South Carolina, who held his office from 1820 until his death in 1842, cared much for the poor friendless slaves. He began to teach them, founding a school for males under the care of a priest, and a school for girls under the care of the Sisters of Mercy. He was compelled to suspend the slave schools by the passage of a law making it criminal to teach a slave to read and write, but he continued the schools for emancipated blacks.[503] After the Civil War, the authorities of the Church were better enabled to take an active part in meeting the religious needs of the Negro. The Plenary Councils of Baltimore invite the colored people of our country to enter the Catholic Church. To her pastors the Negro is a man with an immortal soul to save. Rome, writing to the Bishops of the United States, on January 31, 1866, in preparation for the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, declares: "It is the mind of the Church that the Bishops of the United States, because of the duty weighing upon them of feeding the Lord's flock, should take council together, in order to bring about in a steady way the salvation and the Christian education of the lately emancipated negroes." When assembled in Council the Bishops of the United States cordially seconded the wishes of Rome by quoting the very words in an entire chapter devoted to the question of the salvation of the colored race. The Council declares: "This is true charity, if not only temporal prosperity of men be increased, but if they are sharers in the highest and inestimable benefits, namely, of that true liberty by which we are called and are sons of God, which Christ, dying on a cross and smiting the enemy of the human race, obtains for all men without any exceptions whatsoever."[504] Eighteen years later, in 1884, the Third Plenary Council, in the same city, renewed the exhortations of the preceding council. Among other things it states: "Out of six millions of colored people there is a very large multitude who stand sorely in need of Christian instruction and missionary labor; and it is evident that in the poor dioceses, in which they are mostly found, it is most difficult to bestow on them the care they need without the generous cooperation of our Catholic people in more prosperous localities.... Since the greatest part of the Negroes are as yet outside the fold of Christ, it is a matter of necessity to seek workmen inflamed with zeal for souls, who will be sent into this part of the Lord's harvest."[505]
With the encouragement of the higher authorities of the Church, who sought the spiritual welfare and progress of the race, religious orders and missionary associations took up the work for the Negro. The first of these was the Fathers of the Society of St. Joseph, founded by Cardinal Vaughan, of England. They are known as the Josephites and now have priests and missionaries in nearly all Southern States and dioceses. There are also laboring in this field Fathers of the Holy Ghost, as also members of the Society of the African Missions, and the Society of the Divine Word. Furthermore, there are a number of colored and white Sisterhoods conducting orphanages, academies and Christian Schools for colored children.
In the Second and Third Plenary Councils, the Bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States as a body took up the cause of the Negro race. The Bishops have when occasion offered, by word and deed, shown their friendship and zeal in behalf of the Negro. They have individually raised their voices for humanity and the black man. Cardinal Gibbons, who has long been the leading prelate among the American Bishops, has not only often spoken a good word for the Negro, when the occasion called for it, but has proved by actions his Christian spirit and heroic charity. Among the many instances of his zeal and self-sacrifice, it is related that when he was a young priest in charge of the parish of Elk Ridge, near Baltimore, smallpox broke out in the village, and a general exodus at once followed. One old Negro man, lying at the point of death, had been abandoned by his family and was left alone in his cabin, without food or medicine. Father Gibbons, hearing of the case, hastened to the old man's relief; he procured everything necessary for him, and stood by and tended him until he died. He then procured a coffin and having placed the corpse in it, carried it to the graveyard and buried it with his own hands.[506] A similar incident is told of Rev. J. A. Cunnane, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, now a pastor in Baltimore. When stationed in Charles County he attended an old colored man during an epidemic of smallpox, "took the body to the grave on a wheelbarrow, and with his own hands buried it."[507]
Cardinal Gibbons, some years ago, wrote a letter in which occur the following sentiments:
"What then is the first need of the colored people? A sound religious education; an education that will bring them to a practical knowledge of God, that will teach them their origin and the sublime destiny that awaits them in a better world; an education that will develop their superior being, that will inspire them with the love of wisdom and hatred for sin, that will make them honest, moral and God-fearing men. Such an education will elevate and ennoble them and place them on a religious footing with the white man.
"And secondly, it is a matter of observation that few colored people are mechanics. Now, to be a factor in their country's prosperity, to make their presence felt and to give any influence whatever to their attempts to better their status, it is absolutely necessary that, besides a sound religious training they should be taught to be useful citizens; they should be brought up from childhood to habits of industry. They should be taught that to labor is honorable, and that the idler is a menace to the commonwealth. Institutions should be founded wherein the young men may learn the trades best suited to their inclinations. Thus equipped—on the one hand well-instructed Christians, on the other skilled workmen—our colored people may look forward hopefully to the future. I am happy to bear testimony from personal observation to the many virtues exhibited among so many of the colored people of Maryland, especially their deep sense of religion, their gratitude for favors shown, and their affectionate disposition."[508]
The Cardinal used his great influence against the lynching evil and in an article in the North American Review for October, 1905, pronounced lynching "a blot on our American civilization."[509] It should be stated too that in Catholic countries of Central and South America we rarely ever hear of lynching nor of unnatural crimes which provoke it. In an address announcing "Colorphobia" as a "malignantly unchristian disease," Mr. John C. Minkins, a journalist, not long ago told a Baptist Ministers' Conference of Providence, Rhode Island, that the lynchings in the United States are nearly all in States where there are scarcely any Catholics. He based his statements on figures from the Research Bureau of the Negro Industrial Institute at Tuskegee, Alabama.[510]
In March, 1904, Cardinal Gibbons wrote the following letter to the Rev. George F. Bragg, of Baltimore:
"In reply to your letter of yesterday, I hasten to say that the introduction of the 'Jim Crow' bill into the Maryland Legislature is very distressing to me. Such a measure must of necessity engender very bitter feelings in the colored people against the whites. Peace and harmony can never exist where there is unjust discrimination, and where the members of every community must constantly strive for its peace, especially now in the hour of our affliction. While calamity and disaster are frowning upon our city, mutual helpfulness should be the common endeavor and no action should be lightly taken which would precipitate enmities, strife and acrimonious feelings. The duty of every man is to lighten the burdens that weigh heavily upon his neighbor to the full extent of his power. It is equally the duty of every member of a community to avoid any action which is calculated to make hard and bitter the lot of a less fortunate race. Furthermore, it would be most injudicious to make the whole race suffer for the delinquencies of a few individuals, to visit upon thousands who are innocent that punishment and chastisement which should be meted out to the guilty alone."
Hostile legislation to the colored people was opposed by a noted Catholic layman of Maryland, the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, Attorney General of the United States, under President Roosevelt. Mr. Bonaparte rendered service and wrote sympathetic words to Mr. Bragg, in 1904, concerning the proposed restriction of the elective franchise. He said: "Whatever the restrictions imposed, they should be the same for all citizens; there should not be one law for white men and another law for black men, one law for Americans of two generations and another for Americans of three."[511]