“Accepted and Welcome”: the Unlikely Response of the Jesuits at Marquette University to Jewish Applicants During the Interwar Years, 1920–40

“ACCEPTED AND WELCOME”: THE UNLIKELY RESPONSE OF THE JESUITS AT MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY TO JEWISH APPLICANTS DURING THE INTERWAR YEARS, 1920–40 Michael J. Burns During the period 1920–40—the interwar years, which was also the end of the Progressive Era—Jews found the doors of American higher education closing to them in most instances. Many public colleges and universities and all of the so-called elite private schools, such as those in what came to be called the Ivy League, had separate lists for Jewish applicants as a means of effectively restricting the numbers of Jewish students. Most Jesuits schools did not have such quotas. Georgetown did not have a Jewish quota list, although during this period they had a limited number of Jews.1 Fordham and Saint John’s University in New York2 clearly did not have Jewish quotas and were well known as places that welcomed Jesuit students. Providence College, which is conducted by Dominicans in Rhode Island, welcomed Jews. The Jesuit schools in the Middle West also did not have quotas, and they were attractive places for young Jews to study. The most attractive and most welcoming school, and the place where young Jewish men and women went in great numbers, was Marquette. In contrast, Jews were either excluded outright or severely limited at Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, New York University, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, among many other such schools. Non-Jesuit Catholic schools such as The Catholic University of America and Notre Dame University also barred outright or restricted Jewish enrollment, as did a whole host of smaller Catholic colleges. The quota system that restricted Jews at non-Jesuit schools has been well and widely discussed elsewhere.3 The question that this chapter 1 Georgetown, the first Catholic college in the United States, enrolled Jewish students from its earliest days in the 1790s. For a discussion of early Georgetown students, see Robert Emmett Curran, The Bicentennial History of Georgetown University: From Academy to University, 1789–1889 (Georgetown University Press: Washington, D.C., 1993). 2 Saint John’s is not a Jesuit school; it was founded by and is conducted under the aus- pices of the Congregation of the Mission, known commonly as Vincentians. 3 Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Houghton Mifflin: New York, 2005), and Marcia Graham Synnott, The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admission at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Greenwood Press: Westport, Conn., 1979). <UN> <UN> 318 michael j. burns raises is how did it happen that Jews were so welcome at Marquette and other Jesuit schools? I posit that it was a fortunate series of strong histori- cal, religious, political, social, and geographical currents and events that moved the Jesuits of the Middle West and Marquette University to be so egalitarian, when such behavior was very much out of step with most of the rest of higher education and the greater American society. The first and most compelling event was the arrival of Dutch and Belgian Jesuits into the American West. In 1823, St. Louis, Missouri, was a rough but fast-growing French, Spanish, and American village well west of the frontier line. In that year a small group of penniless Dutch and Belgian Jesuits came to St. Louis to evangelize the Native Americans. They were welcomed by the villagers and the natives, but importantly they were also welcomed by Mother Rose Philipine Duchesne4 and her community of nuns of the Society of the Sacred Heart. The nuns and Mother Duchesne gave the Jesuits food, hous- ing, warm clothing, and much practical advice. Mother Duchesne, who came to St. Louis in 1818, had caught the American spirit of equality early on. Although Sacred Heart nuns would ultimately become famous in the United States for their work educating the children of the financially well- off, Mother Duchesne saw the need to, and did educate, Native American and black children alongside white youngsters.5 In her lengthy conversa- tions with the Jesuits, who viewed Mother Duchesne as a sophisticated French woman as well as a pioneer, the spirit of true American egalitari- anism was easily shared and adopted. Like Duchesne, the Dutch and Belgian Jesuits were motivated by faith, and committed to hard, difficult labor in the middle and western United States.6 St. Louis was founded in 1764 by French nationals. Its control was passed back-and-forth between the French and the Spanish as each coun- try had possession of the area. In majority population and in culture it was a French place, but in 1803 it became American by virtue of the Louisiana Purchase. Now large numbers of Irish poured in, and a significant number 4 Mother Duchesne was born in Grenoble, France, 29 August 1769, arrived in Saint Louis in 1818, and died at Saint Charles, Missouri, 18 November 1852. She was canonized 3 July 1988. 5 Nikola Baumgarten, “Immigrants as Democrats: Education in St. Louis before the Civil War” (Ph.D. diss.: Harvard University, 1993), 31–78. 6 For a detailed discussion of the importance of Mother Duchesne and the Sacred Heart nuns to the work of the first Jesuits in the Mississippi and Missouri valleys, see Michael J. Burns, “Accepted and Welcome: The Unlikely Response of the Jesuits at Marquette University to Jewish Applicants during the Inter-War Years, 1920–1940” (Master’s thesis: Harvard University, 2008), 51–73. <UN> <UN>.

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