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Bishop James Augustine Healy University of Southern Maine USM Digital Commons The Griot Publications Summer 2000 Bishop James Augustine Healy Maureen Elgersman - Lee (ed.) University of Southern Maine Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/griot Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Elgersman - Lee (ed.), Maureen, "Bishop James Augustine Healy" (2000). The Griot. 10. https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/griot/10 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Publications at USM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Griot by an authorized administrator of USM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE Preserving African American Griot History in Maine University of Southern Maine From the Editor’s Desk Black Church, that is, African Americans in Volume 3, Issue 3 It has been a very eventful academic the Catholic Church. Among other things, it Summer 2000 year. Convocation was a resounding success, will examine the life and significance of filled with moments of reflec- Augustine Healy, the first African American to tion, inspiration, and even become a Catholic bishop in the United States. controversy. Eyes and ears were As always, remember to check the back of opened to new people, issues, The Griot for upcoming classes and an update and histories. The Griot has also concerning the African American Archives of taken us on some journeys, from Maine. West and Central Africa to Portland and greater Maine. Maureen Elgersman Lee is assistant professor of This final issue of The Griot in history and faculty scholar for the African American this series will explore a largely Archives of Maine, University of Southern Maine underappreciated aspect of the Library Maureen Elgersman Lee “Black Catholic” is Not African and Catholic elements were (New Brunswick: Rutgers University an Oxymoron found.3 Press, 1997). One example may be drawn from 2Raboteau, Fire, 117. oxymoron: (n) “a figure of Haitian Vodun where the loa (god) 3Ibid., 105-106, 118. speech in which opposite or Legba occupies the position as guardian 4Legba also has been represented by contradictory ideas or terms are of the crossroads, the intersection of the Saint Peter. Fernandez Olmos and combined” material human world and the immate- Paravisini-Gebert, Sacred Possessions, 4-5. – Webster’s New World rial world of spirits. In western Africa, 5Various Web sites have sharp, Dictionary, second edition Legba’s symbol was a tree, having a beautiful graphics, but fundamentally Whether Baptist, Methodist, or composition that stretched out both remain markets for selling spells, amulets, AME Zion, African Americans have horizontally and vertically. When and dolls. See, for example, been predominantly Protestant. This is Africans enslaved in Haiti (then Saint www.folkart.com. Also, by entering the due to the extensive settlement of and Domingue) were expected to convert to keyword “voodoo,” one is presented with proselytization by the English in the Catholicism, they were presented with an entire list of sites from which to Thirteen Colonies and the subsequent various symbols that included the cross. choose. United States of America. The presence In recognizing the complementary of African Americans professing Catholi- compositions of Legba’s tree and the A Place in Time cism has largely been limited to places Catholic cross, Blacks appropriated the Bishop James Augustine such as Louisiana and Maryland where symbol of the cross but used it to Healy (1830-1900): Race, Black Catholicism can be traced back to continue homage to Legba. This accom- French colonization and the Atlantic modation served at least two important Religion, and Respect slave trade. Today, more contemporary purposes. It gave the appearance of Born in Georgia in 1830, James Black Catholic populations are to be successful conversion of allegedly Augustine Healy was the eldest son of found in centers of Haitian, Cuban, and heathen Africans and it created a Michael Healy, an Irish plantation Mexican migration in Florida, Texas, syncretic religious form that allowed for owner, and Eliza Healy (also Mary Elisa), New York, and California. These the retention of highly significant an enslaved mulatto woman whom he populations reflect an adherence either African beliefs.4 married “by frontier process.” Michael to traditional, European-based Catholi- In sum, being Black or African is Healy technically owned James and his cism or to the Caribbean- or Latin not antithetical to being Catholic, or other children, American-based syncretic fusion of vice versa. When one travels outside the and amassed an Catholic and African elements.1 United States, one is struck by the reality estate including Religious historian and authority that many members of the African 1600 acres of Albert Raboteau illuminates the position diaspora identify Catholicism or a land and some of Black Catholics as a minority within a Catholic hybrid as at least one of their 60 slaves. Healy minority, noting that approximately 25 practicing faiths. From the Caribbean remained bound percent of Blacks in America are and South America to Francophone by Georgia laws Catholic, and that only 2 percent of Africa, the colonization of African that did not American Catholics are Black.2 This peoples with adaptive cultures has allow manumis- double minority status magnifies the created a spectrum of religious forms that sion of slaves majority position of Protestantism in the are both resilient and highly structured. and even levied The appeal of Caribbean Afro-Catholic African American population. Bishop James A. Healy (Gerald $1000 fines Regardless of its religious position as forms has also led to a significant amount E. Talbot Collection, African against planters a double minority, Black Catholicism of commodification, aided by the American Archives of Maine, who tried to do University of Southern Maine and its infusion of African and Catholic technological and commercial opportu- Glickman Family Library). so. Because he elements represent some of the most nities of the Internet. This continues to wanted his dynamic manifestations of religious romanticize and make exotic some forms children to grow up free from society’s adaption and syncretism in the Ameri- of Black Catholicism.5 stigma concerning miscegenation and cas. Haitian Vodun, Cuban Santería, and Notes interracial children, he began sending Brazilian Candomblé are all religious 1Albert Raboteau, A Fire in the them to school in the North. Further, systems that developed out of the Bones: Reflections on African-American Michael Healy arranged that, upon his cohesion of African and Catholic dieties, Religious History (Boston: Beacon Press, death, the proceeds of his estate would go symbols, and rituals during slavery. This 1995), 118. An in-depth treatment of to his children; the money would be fusion was most profound and lasting channeled through Georgia executors to a African syncretic religions is Margarite 1 where strong complements between Fernandez Olmos and Lizabeth legal representative in New York. Paravisini-Gebert, ed., Sacred Possessions: Continued on back THE Griot Nonprofit Organization US Postage PAID Portland, ME 04101 African American Archives Permit #370 of Maine University of Southern Maine P.O. Box 9301 Portland, ME 04104-9301 University of Southern Maine A Place in Time the state of Maine; he has the distinction David Andreasen can be reached at of having 86 mission and parochial schools (207) 780-5492. The African American Continued from the front and 50 church buildings built under his Archives of Maine are currently housed on James A. Healy attended different leadership. Healy died in Portland in 1900, the second floor of the USM Library in religious boarding schools in Long Island and was appointed assistant to the papal Gorham. They will continue there until and Pennsylvania, before being admitted to throne the same year.6 renovations to the upper floors of the College of the Holy Cross in Massachus- Glickman Library in Portland are com- setts in 1844. Seemingly, Healy’s life was Notes plete. significantly transformed by the experi- 1Albert S. Foley, S.J., Bishop Healy: ence, for he recorded in a later diary entry, Beloved Outcaste (Dublin: Clonmore and Calendar of Events “What a change! Then I was nothing; now Reynolds Ltd., 1956), 12-21 passim; Albert Fall 2000 I am a Catholic.” Despite his optimism, Raboteau, A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on Healy did not find the respite from racist African- American Religious History (Boston: HTY 341 Black Women in the innuendo he was looking for, and he Beacon Press, 1995), 123. Foley reports Americas – This comparative history struggled for years with subtle and covert that the Catholic Church allowed a man to course explores the histories of Black negativism from his peers.2 take a baptized woman as his wife without women in Canada, the United States, and While studying for the priesthood in a official ceremony in the event that a priest the Anglo-Caribbean, particularly Montreal seminary in the spring of 1850, was not available at the time of the actual Barbados and Jamaica. Topics will include, Healy received word that his mother, Eliza, marriage or for a period of one month slavery, women and paid labor, and Black had died; within months, news of his following. feminism. Wednesdays, 4-6:30 p.m. father’s demise followed. Given the racial 2Foley, Bishop Healy, 16-21. HTY 400 The Color Line – W.E.B. mores of the day, the questions of James 3Ibid., 42-46. DuBois wrote in The Souls of Black Folk Healy’s status as the son of an enslaved 4Ibid., 108, 117, 121. (1903) that “the problem of the twentieth woman, of the future of his siblings who 5Ibid., 123. century is the problem of the color line.” remained in Georgia, and of the legality of 6 Patrick and Alexander Healy were Using DuBois’ study, assorted movies, and his father’s will all threatened to destroy his also ordained to the priesthood, with popular culture studies of the twentieth hopes of becoming a priest and even Patrick holding the position as president of century, this course will explore the remaining free.
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