Most histories of the Civil Rights Movement start with all the
players in place--among them organized groups of African Americans,
White Citizens' Councils, nervous politicians, and religious
leaders struggling to find the right course. Anderson, however,
takes up the historical moment right before that, when small groups
of black and white Catholics in the city of New Orleans began
efforts to desegregate the archdiocese, and the Society of Jesus
(Jesuits) began, in fits and starts, to integrate quietly the New
Orleans Province.
Anderson leads readers through the tumultuous years just after
World War II when the Roman Catholic Church in the American South
struggled to reconcile its commitment to social justice with the
legal and social heritage of Jim Crow society. Though these early
efforts at reform, by and large, failed, they did serve to
galvanize Catholic supporters and opponents of the Civil Rights
Movement and provided a model for more successful efforts at
desegregation in the '60s.
As a Jesuit himself, Anderson has access to archives that remain
off-limits to other scholars. His deep knowledge of the history of
the Catholic Church also allows him to draw connections between
this historical period and the present. In the resistance to
desegregation, Anderson finds expression of a distinctly American
form of Catholicism, in which lay people expect Church authorities
to ratify their ideas and beliefs in an almost democratic fashion.
The conflict he describes is as much between popular and
hierarchical models of the Church as between segregation and
integration.
This book has been made possible through a grant from the Louisiana
Endowment for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
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