Desegregating Dixie: Southern Catholics and Desegregation, 1945-1980

这项研究的重点是1945至1980年间，美国南方的非裔美国人和白人天主教徒对天主教会和世俗社会中种族废除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，它的胜利岁月，以及它的后果。作为南方不断扩大的双重宗派的成员，天主教徒传统上面临着来自占多数的新教徒(黑人和白人)的敌意和怀疑，天主教徒有必要进行研究。现有的学术研究表明，天主教会作为一个等级制度机构，与更民主的主流新教教派相比，受到实质上的世俗种族隔离情绪的限制要少得多。社会学家E·富兰克林·弗雷泽认为，对许多黑人天主教徒来说，皈依是一种表达向上流动的社会地位的手段，这种社会地位将他们与以浸礼会和卫理公会教徒为主的南方黑人群众区分开来。因此，非裔美国人对民权运动置身事外，也没有挑战教会内部的种族歧视。这项研究挑战了这些论点，并解释了天主教经历的多样性。20世纪30年代，教皇对非裔美国人表现出越来越大的兴趣，美国主教发表声明，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。南部边缘地区的一些天主教，如罗利的沃尔特斯主教，在1954年最高法院做出布朗州立学校废除种族隔离的裁决之前，下令取消教区学校的种族隔离。然而，其他主教，特别是在白人隔离主义情绪最强烈的南方腹地，因为黑人人口相对较多，直到联邦法院实施布朗之后才采取行动。新奥尔良大主教拉梅尔一再推迟教区学校废除种族隔离的时间，因为州当局和许多世俗天主教徒的强烈反对。非裔美国天主教徒不是被动的，而是经常通过向主教施压，要求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。这项研究调查了南方白人天主教徒中种族隔离情绪的强度，以及种族隔离主义者发展的理论基础。尽管少数天主教种族隔离主义者提出了对种族隔离的圣经辩护，但大多数人提到了习俗和传统、政教分离、所谓的共产主义渗透或民权运动的方向，以及结社自由的权利。少数南方白人天主教徒支持融合，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。这项研究分析了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。另一个焦点是以白人为主的天主教教团，以及北部天主教神职人员和修女参与援助非裔美国人和民权运动。这项研究将南方天主教徒对废除种族隔离的反应与南方和北方新教徒以及北方天主教徒的反应进行了比较。虽然天主教等级制度在全国和南方的声明往往先于新教机构的声明，但当地的情况限制了废除种族隔离的实施。这项研究分析了南方天主教废除种族隔离的过程，并考虑了非裔美国人和白人的观点。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。这项研究的结论解释了天主教废除种族隔离的多样化经历，并评估了1980年的天主教会和种族。

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.