Desegregating Dixie: Southern Catholics and Desegregation, 1945-1980

废除迪克西种族隔离：南方天主教徒和废除种族隔离，1945 年至 1980 年

• 批准号: AH/E004970/1
• 负责人: Mark Newman
• 金额: $ 3.23万
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2008 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FE004970%2F1
• 关键词: Desegregating; Dixie; Southern; Catholics; Desegregation

The research focuses on the response of African American and white Catholics in the American South to racial desegregation and inequality in the Catholic Church and secular society between 1945 and 1980. The time frame includes the emergence of the southern civil rights movement, its years of triumph, and its aftermath. As members of an expanding biracial denomination in the South that had traditionally faced hostility and suspicion from the Protestant majority, black and white, Catholics necessitate study. Existing scholarship suggests that as a hierarchical institution, the Catholic Church was far less constrained by substantial lay segregationist sentiment than the more democratic mainstream Protestant denominations. Sociologist E. Franklin Frazier suggested that for many black Catholics conversion was a means of expressing an upwardly mobile social status that differentiated them from the predominantly Baptist and Methodist southern black masses. Consequently African Americans held aloof from the civil rights movement and did not challenge racial discrimination within the Church. This research challenges these contentions, and explains the diversity of the Catholic experience. The papacy exhibited growing interest in African Americans in the 1930s, and United States bishops issued statements condemning racial discrimination in the 1940s, and segregation in 1958 and 1963. Some Catholic bishops in the peripheral South, such as Bishop Walters of Raleigh, ordered desegregation of parochial schools ahead of the Supreme Court's Brown state school desegregation ruling in 1954. However, other bishops, especially in the Deep South where white segregationist sentiment was greatest because of a relatively high black population, did not act until after the federal courts implemented Brown. Archbishop Rummel of New Orleans repeatedly postponed parochial school desegregation because of virulent opposition from state authorities and many lay Catholics. Rather than being passive, African American Catholics often challenged segregation by pressuring bishops to desegregate parochial schools, and many black Catholics also participated in civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s. The research investigates the strength of segregationist sentiment among southern white Catholics and the rationale segregationists developed. While a minority of Catholic segregationists advanced a biblical defence of segregation, most cited custom and tradition, separation of church and state, alleged communist infiltration or direction of the civil rights movement and the right to freedom of association. A minority of southern white Catholics supported integration and some formed interracial councils, assisted by the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice (NCCIJ), an unofficial group that maintained a Southern Field Office in New Orleans. The research analyses the impact of the NCCIJ's work, and statements condemning racial inequality and segregationist violence by the Vatican, Catholic bishops, the Catholic Committee of the South, and Catholic newspapers. Another focus is the involvement of predominantly white Catholic orders, and northern Catholic clergy and nuns in aiding African Americans and the civil rights movement. The study compares the response of southern Catholics to desegregation to that of southern and northern Protestants, and northern Catholics. While the statements of the Catholic hierarchy nationally and in the South were often ahead of those of Protestant bodies, local circumstances conditioned implementation of desegregation. The research analyses the process of southern Catholic desegregation, and considers African American and white perspectives. When hitherto racially distinct churches or schools merged, it was the black institution that the diocese closed.The study's conclusion accounts for the diversity of the Catholic experience of desegregation, and assesses the Catholic Church and race in 1980.

研究的重点是1945年至1980年期间，美国南部的非裔美国人和白色天主教徒对天主教会和世俗社会中种族隔离和不平等的反应。时间框架包括南方民权运动的出现、其胜利的岁月及其后果。作为南方一个不断扩大的双胞胎教派的成员，天主教传统上面临着来自新教多数派、黑人和白色的敌意和怀疑，因此有必要学习。现有的学术研究表明，作为一个等级制度的机构，天主教会远不如更民主的主流新教教派那样受到大量世俗隔离主义情绪的限制。社会学家E.富兰克林·弗雷泽认为，对于许多黑人天主教徒来说，皈依天主教是表达向上移动的社会地位的一种手段，这种社会地位使他们有别于以浸礼会和卫理公会为主的南方黑人群众。因此，非裔美国人与民权运动保持距离，也没有挑战教会内部的种族歧视。这项研究挑战这些论点，并解释了天主教的经验的多样性。20世纪30年代，教皇对非洲裔美国人的兴趣越来越大，美国主教们发表声明谴责20世纪40年代的种族歧视，以及1958年和1963年的种族隔离。一些南方外围的天主教主教，如罗利的沃尔特斯主教，在1954年最高法院对布朗州立学校废除种族隔离的裁决之前，下令废除教区学校的种族隔离。然而，其他主教，特别是在南方腹地，那里的白色种族隔离主义情绪最大，因为相对较高的黑人人口，没有采取行动，直到联邦法院执行布朗。新奥尔良大主教拉梅尔一再推迟教区学校废除种族隔离，因为来自国家当局和许多平信徒的恶毒反对。非裔美国天主教徒并不被动，而是经常通过向主教施压取消教区学校的种族隔离来挑战种族隔离，许多黑人天主教徒也参加了20世纪60年代的民权示威活动。这项研究调查了南部白色天主教徒中种族隔离情绪的强度和种族隔离主义者发展的基本原理。虽然少数天主教种族隔离主义者提出了《圣经》对种族隔离的辩护，但大多数人引用了习俗和传统，教会和国家的分离，声称共产主义渗透或指导民权运动和结社自由的权利。少数南方白色天主教徒支持融合，一些人在全国天主教跨种族正义会议（NCCIJ）的协助下成立了跨种族委员会，NCCIJ是一个非官方组织，在新奥尔良设有南方外地办事处。该研究分析了NCCIJ工作的影响，以及梵蒂冈、天主教主教、南方天主教委员会和天主教报纸谴责种族不平等和种族隔离暴力的声明。另一个重点是参与主要是白色天主教订单，和北方天主教神职人员和修女在援助非洲裔美国人和民权运动。这项研究比较了南方天主教徒与南方和北方新教徒以及北方天主教徒对废除种族隔离的反应。虽然天主教统治集团在全国和南方的声明往往领先于新教团体，但当地的情况制约了废除种族隔离的实施。该研究分析了南方天主教废除种族隔离的过程，并考虑了非洲裔美国人和白色的观点。当迄今为止不同种族的教堂或学校合并时，教区关闭的是黑人机构。该研究的结论解释了天主教废除种族隔离的多样性，并评估了1980年的天主教会和种族。