To Be Both Black and Catholic Cyprian Davis
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University of Dayton eCommons Marianist Award Lectures U.S. Catholic Special Collection 2006 To Be Both Black and Catholic Cyprian Davis Follow this and additional works at: http://ecommons.udayton.edu/uscc_marianist_award Recommended Citation Davis, Cyprian, "To Be Both Black and Catholic" (2006). Marianist Award Lectures. 2. http://ecommons.udayton.edu/uscc_marianist_award/2 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the U.S. Catholic Special Collection at eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Marianist Award Lectures by an authorized administrator of eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. US.CATH BX 1407 .N4 D262 2007 TO BE BOTH BLACK AND CATHOLIC by REV. CYPRIAN DAVIS, O.S.B. Marianist Award Lecture 2006 / THE UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON -~ US C.AiH ~~- lt.fo7 NL-\ t) ~~l ~0 /)'·7 Copyright© 2007 by The University of Dayton ... \ Dom Cyprian Davis, O.S.B. was born and raised in Washington, D.C. He graduated from the historic Dunbar High School in 1948 and soon thereafter entered the Monastery of Saint Meinrad in south~ ern Indiana. In 1951, he was professed and in 1956 he was ordained to the priesthood. A year later, he earned the STL from the Catholic University of America and the doctorate in history from the University ofLouvain in Belgium in 1977. Fr. Davis is most well known for his groundbreaking and inspiring study, The History ofBlack Catholics in the United States, published in 1990. In recognition of the seminal quality of his research and writing, Fr. Davis was awarded the John Gilmary Shea Award from the Ameri can Catholic Historical Association in 1991. An even greater testa ment to the significance of The History ofBlack Catholics in the United States is that it has inspired a multitude of master's theses, dissertations, · documentaries, and historical monographs. Fr. Davis' contributions to the U.S. Bishops' 1979 pastoral letter "Brothers and Sisters to Us" and to the Black U.S. Bishops' pastoral let ter "What We Have Seen and Heard" in 1984 are also ways in which he has offered his intellect and his faith in service to the everyday lives of Catholics around the country. Most recently, Fr. Davis has lent his scholarly attention to the history of Mother Henriette Delille, founder of the Sisters of the Holy Fam ily, by writing the postitio'for her canonization. In 2004, Father Davis published Henriette Delille: Servant ofSlaves. He also co-edited with Sr. Jamie Phelps, O.P. Stamped With the Image of God· African Ameri cans as God's Image in Black, an anthology of primary source materials related to the history of Black Catholics in the United States in 2003. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the foundation of St. Meinrad · Archabbey, Fr. Davis edited To Prefer Nothing to Christ: Saint Meinrad Archabbey, 1854-2004. Fr. Davis is professor of Church History at the St. Meinrad School ofTheology and professor of history at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies of Xavier University of Louisiana. Fr. Davis has also taught at the Monastic Studium established in West Africa at the Abbey of Dzogbegan in Togo and the Abbey of Koubri in Burkina Paso in 1994. And, more locally, Fr. Davis lectures widely on the topic of Black Cath olic history at colleges, universities, seminaries, and parishes all over the United States. 3 ,, v The following lecture was given at the University ofDayton on the occasion ofthe presentation ofthe 2006 Marianist Award to Fr. Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., February 1, 2007 5 TO BE BOTH BLACK AND CATHOLIC ords cannot convey my profound gratitude to the University of W Dayton fo~ presenting me with the Marianist Award. I am never -at ease when talking about scholarly accomplishments, because what- eve; I have do.ne has been and will be done better. I am happy, however, to be able to talk about my faith as a Catholic and to reveal the oppor tunities given me through scholarship and study. When I looked down the list of recipients of the Marianist Award, I came to 1960 where the recipient was Father Eamon Carroll, O.Carm. I knew Father Eamon before I became a Catholic, <:tnd when I talk about being a ~atholic, it is with him that I can begin. Growing up in the District of Columbia I was born in Washington, D.C., in 1930. It was a Southern city; a city divided between whites and blacks. Even before the Civil War, blacks outnumbered whites. My mother's family moved to Washing tonfrom Virginia right after the Civil War. My father's family was also from Virginia and partly from Connecticut. I came from a Protestant family, but my maternal grandfather was a Catholic whose roots wete in southern Maryland, where the Jesuits had baptized their slaves and the slaves of th"e landholders. My grandfather quarreled with the priest and left tlie Church. I never could find out what the priest did that caused him to leave. My grandfather returned to Catholicism shortly before his death. His eldest son, my uncle, was about twelve when my grandfather left the Church. My uncle had remained a Catholic. He took i:n'e to Mass for the first time. The church was St. Augustine's Church in the nation's capital, one of the oldest black parishes in the United States and truly one of the most beautiful. I was about 11 years old. The Mass was in Latin ... .it was during the Second World War .... the church Was crowded ... .it Was a black parish but because ofthe war mariy whites were crowded into the congregation. I had become interested in Catholicism because as a boy I devoured books, especially history books. When I read about the Middle Ages, I was enthralled by all the external aspects of the Catholic Church. I was 7 a hopeless romantic. It was all superficial. I do not know exactly when this historical interest changed from an adolescent transitory fad to a serious faith. • My father had something to do with it. He was ~ profes sor first at Howard University and then at the University of the District of Columbia. He was an excellent athlete, but even more an intellec tual and a voracious reader, the first one in hi~ family to go to college. He had grown up with Catholic youths in Hartford, Connecticut. To him, Catholicism was not a foreign reality; but it was an eth_nic reality. My father was on the Howard 'University faculty at the same time as soon-to-be civil rights leaders. Professors like Thurgood Marshall, who would_ lead the fight for desegregating the public schools and become the first black Supreme Court justice ... Ralph Bunche, who would later be part of the United Nations Secretariat and was to be the 1950 re cipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (his family lived on the same street' as ours) ... Howard Thurman, dean of the chapel, a Protestant mystic and spiritual writer, to whom I delivered the daily newspaper. • My father and I argued about Catholic teaching. I was always try ing to convert him. We did it every day at the dinner table, to the consternation of my sister. My father did not see Catholicism as evil. Like most African American intellectuals, he saw the Church as hypo critical. Many white Protestant leaders understood racial segregation as something mandated by the Bible. The KKK and other white su premacists found in the Bible support for lynching and racial intimida tion against blacks, and religious intimidation against Catholics. On the other. hand, in Washington and in many other cities both in the North and in the South, black Catholics were prevented from entering a designated white church or were relegated to a segregated section of many churches. Some pastors stood at the doors to tell black Catholics that "they were to go to their own churches." There were practically no black priests. Most private schools and universities were closed to blacks including well-known black Catholic institutions of higher learning. During the football season, all black football fans celebrated the defeat of the Notre Dame "Fighting Irish," because for the average black man in the street, the University of Notre Dame was the epitome of Catholicism. My father forced me to consider the inconsistencies of Catholicism in the United States. As in all African American scho9ls, Washington, D.C. observed Negro History Week, which later became Negro History Month. All of us were to learn about the contributions of black Americans to the history of the United States. My father had a tremendous pride in black American history. He wanted me to have 8 the same pride. Between fathers and sons, the son is not always'at the same place as the father. The seeds rrly father planted in me did not blossom until.much later. Catholic University had admitted black students in the early 1900s, and then the Jim Crow laws were introduced in Washington under the Woodrow Wilson Administration, which began in 1912. Universities, government agencies, entertainment, daily life in the District became segregated. There were no signs, only the establishment of a hard and fast Jim Crow Law thatblanketed the city. Catholic University only began to readmit black students in about 1938.1 My father wished to study for a doctorate. He never finished, but one of his professors was a 'Benedictine monk, Dom Thomas Verner Moore, profess~r of psychology and psychiatry. My father considered him to have been the best teacher he had ever had. Although not easily impressed, my father developed a real admiration for him.