by Bernard A. Cook
Church of the Epiphany, 2712 Dumbarton Street NW, Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
The manifestations of racism and its results in the history of Holy Trinity parish have been and are continuing to be examined by Holy Trinity’s history committee.[1] The following essay is an attempt at comparative history.
There are similarities and parallels in the histories of a number of parishes in the District of Columbia and the segment of Virginia which had been part of the district from 1790 to 1846. African American parishioners offended by the fact that they were not treated as equal members of the Body of Christ withdrew from a number of Washington area Catholic Churches and founded their own Catholic parishes where they could worship without being subjected to demeaning treatment.
The first of these stories of exclusion, exodus, and rebirth occurred in 1858. In that year, free Black Catholics repelled by the racism they experienced at St. Matthew’s, where they were forced to attend Mass in the basement, founded Martin de Porres, the first Black Catholic parish in the District of Columbia. According to St. Augustine’s parish history, “Faced with a society that was not yet willing to put off the last vestiges of slavery and a Church that, at best, tolerated the presence of Black people in its congregation, these men and women founded a Catholic school and chapel on 15th Street under the patronage of Blessed Martin de Porres.”[2]
The parish was re-dedicated in 1876 to St. Augustine, and in 1908 the parish school, which had been forced to close in 1885, reopened under the direction of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first religious order of Black Catholic women. It was that order which Anne Marie Becraft, Holy Trinity’s pioneering promoter of education for Black children, joined in 1831 when she was 26. St. Augustine’s, today, proudly calls itself the mother church of Black Catholics in the United States.
The second exodus of Washington Black Catholics occurred in 1883. Repelled by the racism which they experienced at St. Peter’s Catholic Church on 2nd Street on Capitol Hill, Black parishioners petitioned Bishop James Gibbons, the Bishop of Baltimore, whose diocese at that time included Washington, to establish their own church.[3] The 1500 Black Catholics at St. Peter’s had not been allowed to attend Mass, have their children baptized, or celebrate marriage in the body of the parish church but had been relegated to its basement. Fr. James R. Matthews, the pastor, was sympathetic and supported the aspiration of his African American parishioners for their own parish. He asked his assistant Fr. J. M. O’Brien to write Bishop Gibbons on their behalf. O’Brien wrote, “They, prompted by the necessity of their situation, have voluntarily taken the matter into their own hands and are consequently ready to go to work at once if you only encourage them."[4] Gibbons gave his approval, and construction of the church, dedicated to St. Cyprian, reputedly the first African bishop to suffer martyrdom, was begun in 1893 at 13th and C Streets, S.W.
During the construction of the church, Fr. Matthews celebrated Mass for his Black parishioners at St. Peter’s Hall on E Street. The temporary congregation took the name St. Benedict the Moor. Even before the church was built, a school, later named St. Ann’s Academy, was launched. A parishioner, Miss Mary Atkins, whose sister was an Oblate Sister of Providence, donated her home and a neighboring lot as a site for a school.[5] The school, which initially had 160 students, was conducted by the Oblate Sisters of Providence. Fr. Matthews left St. Peter’s and served as pastor of St. Cyprian’s from its inception in 1893 until 1934.
In 1966, to the dismay of the parishioners of St. Cyprian’s, they were merged with Holy Comforter, a formerly White parish decimated by White flight to the suburbs. The Black Catholics felt that they were forced to relinquish their own church, the product of their sacrifices and labor, in which their families had celebrated milestones of the faith. Fr. Robert M. Kearn, a former pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian, said, “They weren't consulted properly. They were given two weeks notice to evacuate their church."[6] Nevertheless, Black Catholics constituted approximately 95 percent of the combined church’s congregation and liturgies at the combined parish were replete with African-American spirituality.[7]
The exodus of Washington area Black Catholics to their own parishes continued in the twentieth century. Black parishioners of St. Teresa of Avila in Anacostia in southwest Washington, compelled to attend Mass in the last two pews of St. Teresa’s, were excluded from any active role in the parish, and were denied religious instruction for their children. The parish history frankly relates,
As the church grew, racial tensions began to slowly surface in the predominantly White church. Black Catholics became disappointed and dissatisfied with their positions and the limited roles they were allowed to assume in the church that they had helped to build. Although everyone believed in one unifying Lord, everyone did not believe in one unifying church.[8]
In 1911, no longer willing to tolerate the discrimination to which they were subjected, Louis Cooke and Charles Edelin, with the support of St. Teresa’s pastor, Fr. Charles Bart, met with Cardinal Gibbons to request the formation of a parish for St. Teresa’s Black Catholics. With support of the Cardinal and Fr. Bart, before a separate parish was constructed, the basement of St. Teresa’s was renovated for the “’Colored’ Catholic Community of Anacostia.” In 1918, the Cardinal gave the Community permission to buy land and build a church. Parishioners cleared the land and in 1920 a formal procession marched from St. Teresa’s up the “Hill” to lay the cornerstone of Our Lady of Perpetual Help church. The church was completed and dedicated in 1921.
Today the parish website proclaims,
Our Lady of Perpetual Help is a Roman Catholic Community serving the Black Catholics of Washington DC for more than 95 years!...The uniqueness of Our Lady of Perpetual Help places it in a leadership position allowing interaction with other Black and non-Black parishes! Utilizing the gifts of Blacks’ spirituality through music, dance, education and spiritual special action our call to ministry is to proclaim the Good News to our Brothers and Sisters who do not know Christ! We continue in service, have faith in the present, and are marching forward as an experience community![9]
Ironically, racial tensions in the 1960s led to an exodus of the White population from Anacostia. In 1976, Fr. George A. Stallings Jr. was appointed the first Black pastor of St. Teresa’s where Black Catholics had been earlier treated with such disdain. Fr. Stallings introduced a liturgy that was both African-American and Catholic” in a church that now labels itself “the Mother Church of Southeast Washington.”[10]
In 1923 the Black members of Holy Trinity with the permission of the bishop withdrew and formed their own church, Epiphany, in
Georgetown. The congregation at Epiphany numbered around 600 in
1924.[11] That exodus was preceded by the exodus of Black Catholics from the other Washington parish staffed by the Jesuits, St. Aloysius church on North Capitol St. N.W.
St. Aloysius, which was consecrated in 1859, had among its parishioners both Irish and Black Catholics. Morris J. MacGregor wrote of “the large contingent of black Catholics who worshipped at the Jesuit church … albeit from segregated pews in its upper balcony.”[12]Black parishioners joined sodalities and other religious societies, but attendance at the functions of the societies was segregated. “In all cases the role of minimum participation meant rigid exclusion from full participation in parish social organizations as a matter of course.” [13]
Dissatisfied with this segregated status at St. Aloysius’, over 200 Black Catholic families petitioned Cardinal Gibbons in 1919, to establish a church where they could practice their faith with acceptance and dignity. Their request was granted. Their new church, the Church of the Holy Redeemer on New York Avenue in North West Washington, was dedicated in October 1922.[14] In 2012, St. Aloysius’ parish was closed and its parishioners assigned to Holy Redeemer. Fr. Raymond Kemp observed that it was, “Ironic, that Holy Redeemer becomes the parish to which St. Aloysius parishioners are sent when the Jesuits and the Archdiocese closed St. Als.”[15]
Two additional churches which were established in the Washington area for African American Catholics around this time, the Church of the Incarnation and Good Shepherd/St. Paul, were not cases of exodus from predominantly White parishes. However, they were instances where Black Catholics were not treated as equal members of the Body of Christ by White Catholics. Unable to find a place at the Eucharistic table, approximately twenty Black families with the support of Fr. Francis A. Schwallenberg, the pastor at St. Margaret’s, sought a site where they could celebrate the Eucharist without impediment or insult. Around 1912, they found a temporary site at the Moses Masonic Hall on Lane Place. In September 1914, the corner stone of their new church, the Church of the Incarnation, was laid on Browning Place, N.E., now 46th Street. The church was assigned to the Josephites and received its first resident pastor in 1924.[16] Around that same time Good Shepherd / St. Vincent de Paul was established near the Navy Yard on 14 M Street, S.W.
In addition to parallels with the predominantly White Washington parishes’ treatment of Black Catholics, Holy Trinity in Georgetown and St. Mary’s in Alexandria, Virginia shared a common background. In fact, there was there was an organic connection between St. Mary’s and Holy Trinity. They had the same founder, Fr. Francis Neale, S.J.[17] St. Mary’s was a mission church of the Maryland Jesuits, and Fr. Neale attended to the needs of the parishioners intermittently until approximately 1818.
From 1818 until 1831, a secular priest Joseph W. Fairclough, acting as Neale’s agent, resided at the parish. Fairclough was succeeded by a series of Jesuit pastors,[18] and until 1891, St. Mary’s was staffed by Maryland Jesuits. Fr. Stephen Larrigaudelle Dubuisson, S.J., who was pastor of Holy Trinity from 1825 to 1828, and from 1831 to 1833, was pastor of St. Mary’s from 1837 to 1841[19]; Fr. John E. Blox, S.J., was pastor in the 1850s, followed by Fr. Peter Kroes, S.J., and Fr. Dennis J. O’Kane, S.J., who was pastor from 1872 until 1891, when the Diocese of Richmond assumed control of the church.[20]
Before Emancipation both Holy Trinity and St. Mary’s had free and enslaved Black parishioners as well as White parishioners. In both parishes Black parishioners whether free or enslaved were not treated as equal members of the Body of Christ. This unequal and unseemly divisiveness continued after Emancipation. In 1914 Black parishioners of St. Mary’s with the permission of their bishop withdrew from St. Mary’s and founded their own church, St. Joseph’s. In 1923 the Black members of Holy Trinity with the permission of the bishop withdrew and formed their own church, Epiphany, in Georgetown. This exodus involved 357 Black adults and nearly 300 children.[21]
Earlier articles have dealt with the founding of Holy Trinity and the role that race played in its history.[22] Due to the connections and similarities in the history of the two parishes, the history of racism at St. Mary’s resonates with the racism experienced by Black Catholics at Holy Trinity.
Under the direction of Fr. Neale and with the support of Lt. Col. John Fitzgerald, a Catholic, who had served as an aides-de-camp for George Washington a Catholic church was constructed in Alexandria in 1795 and 1796 on Church and South Washington Streets then on the edge of the town. George Washington and the son of the founder of Alexandria both contributed to the construction of the initial church. In 1809, Fr. Francis Neale purchased an old Methodist meeting house on Chapel Alley for $900. That served as the parish church until 1826. In 1826, the present church on 310 South Royal Street was erected. In 1869, Fr. Peter Kroes, S.J., added a chapel on the church’s south side, dedicated to St. Joseph. That chapel was the site of a Sunday school for Black children.[23]
Alexandria was located in the District of Columbia from 1790 until the retrocession of the District’s land to the west of the Potomac to Virginia in 1846. The retrocession was prompted by the fear of enslavers in Alexandria, which had a very active and lucrative slave market, that slavery might be abolished in the District of Columbia. In fact, when the Jesuits decided to sell the people, whom they enslaved on their Maryland plantations, the first group, 51 enslaved men and women, were taken to Alexandria where they were placed aboard a ship and transported to Louisiana.[24] Later, in November 1838, 130 enslaved men, women, and children sold by the Jesuits led by Fr Thomas Mulledy, S.J. (president of Georgetown University, 1829-1838 and 1845-1848, and Provincial of the Jesuits of Maryland Province in 1838) were transported on the Katherine Jackson from Alexandria to New Orleans.[25] These enslaved people from the Jesuit plantations in Maryland were sold by the Jesuits to a plantation owner in Louisiana.[26]
A ship anchored in the Potomac at Alexandria receiving enslaved people for shipment to a slave market probably in New Orleans[27]
St Mary’s is the oldest Catholic Church in what is now the Commonwealth of Virginia. The parish covered approximately 80 square miles, and eventually served approximately 1600 Catholics. Mission chapels were established at Falls Church, 10 miles from Alexandria, and Fairfax Station, 17 miles from Alexandria, where priests from St. Mary’s would celebrate Mass every other Sunday.[28]
At St. Mary’s Black Catholics, free and enslaved, were required to sit in a separate segregated part of the church in raised galleries along both sides of the church.[29] Holy Trinity, also relegated its Black parishioners, free and enslaved, to separate segregated areas of the church, initially raised side galleries and later a section of the balcony and required them to approach the Communion rail after the White parishioners. They also had separate segregated religion education classes.[30]
After the Civil War as Jim Crow regulations were imposed in society, Back Catholics in Alexandria were not even permitted to be married in the church. Their marriages were celebrated by the parish’s priests in the homes of Black parishioners.[31] By the beginning of the twentieth century, a Josephite priest, Fr. Charles Hannigan, came every Sunday from Richmond to celebrate Mass for Alexandria’s Black Catholics in an alcove of the church. After Mass they met in St. Mary’s Lyceum.[32] There the plans for a new Black Catholic parish were developed.
In 1913, Thomas Blair, who had served as sexton of St. Mary’s for thirty years, organized a meeting of Alexandria’s Black Catholics to attempt to organize their own church. With the support of Fr. Hannigan, Blair and his committee asked Bishop Denis J. O’Connell, the bishop of the Diocese of Richmond, for permission to establish a parish for Alexandria’s Black Catholics. In 1914, the committee acquired land for the church at the corners of Wythe and North Columbus streets in what was then a predominantly Black section of Alexandria. Fr. Hannigan was able to persuade Katherine Drexel to contribute $8,000 toward the construction of the church.[33] The remaining $4,000 was raised by Blair’s committee.[34] Another Josephite, Fr. Joseph J. Kelly, was appointed to lead the church which was dedicated on May 14, 1916. Thomas Blair lived to see his dream take shape, but he died two weeks after the dedication of St. Joseph’s. [35]
Fr. Kelly lived in the church’s sacristy until a rectory was built in 1921. This willingness to sacrifice characterized another Josephite, Fr. Bernard Lyons. Fr. Lyons, who was pastor of Epiphany, the new Black parish in Georgetown, lived in the church behind the sacristy during the Depression.[36]
In 1928, St. Joseph’s established the first Catholic elementary school for African American children in Northern Virginia. The new school was staffed by the Oblate Sisters of Providence. The school operated within the church itself until a school building was completed in 1931. The school closed in 1969 when integration provided alternative opportunities to Black students.
In 2022, Fr. Donald Fest commenting on St. Joseph’s pointed out that 80 percent of the 3 million African American Catholics worshiped in predominantly White parishes. He stated that African American culture is lacking in those parishes. He stressed that at St. Joseph’s “the flavors of African American culture” were part of the parish’s liturgies. “The Masses tend to go longer than other parishes, the music might be a tad different, and enthusiasm and expressions might be more pronounced.” Fr. Fest asserted, “It means something to people when you see your customs, traditions or culture being celebrated.” St. Joseph’s, in his opinion, importantly offers Black parishioners more opportunity to serve in leadership positions. According to Fr. Fest, “That’s one of the reasons these parishes were founded and exist to this day.”[37]
St. Joseph’s was initially the only Catholic church for Black Catholics in northern Virginia. The area grew rapidly during World War II. In 1947 a second Catholic church, Our Lady Queen of Peace, was established in Arlington. Mrs. Cecilia Braveboy, a parishioner at Our Lady Queen of Peace, wrote, “Sacraments for Black people were not readily available in the White Virginia parishes. St. Charles parish in North Arlington was noted for possibly giving communion to African Americans at Mass.”[38] Fared with this scandalous impediment to the practice of their Faith, sixteen Black Catholics requested permission from Bishop Peter Ireton of the Richmond Diocese to establish their own church in Green Valley,[39] then a predominantly Black section of Arlington.
The construction of the Pentagon and the roads built to provide access to it resulted in the destruction of several predominantly Black neighborhoods. Some of the displaced African Americans settled in Green Valley.[40] So Green Valley was a natural location chosen by Black Catholics for their own church. Among the sixteen founders of that church, Our Lady Queen of Peace, were people with names common to the early Black parishioners of Holy Trinity, Joseph Bowman, Alice Butler, and Lawrence and Jessie Butler.[41]
There are numerous parallels between Holy Trinity, St. Mary, and other area parishes regarding the status and treatment of Black Catholics. The history of these parishes is not completely negative. The parishes today are testaments to the dedication and devotion of past parishioners. However, their histories reveal a negative side. Perhaps priests and parishioners at these churches were oblivious to the structural evils of slavery, segregation, and racism and the moral failure involved in participating in these structural evils, but they did participate in them. Attention to St. Paul’s admonition against divisions at the Eucharistic table (I Corinthians 11:21-22) should have been a wake-up call. In his letter to Philemon, Paul admonished Philemon to accept Onesimus, whom Philemon had enslaved, “as a beloved brother.” Paul wrote, “I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is requires, yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you…” (Phil. 8 and 16) St. James (James, 2:1-7) decried divisions in the Eucharistic assembly by those assigning less desirable places to those denigrated as inferior. However, accommodation to American society’s code of racial apartheid trumped the demands of Christian charity and sisterhood.
Thomas Merton reacted to practices in the Diocese of Alexandria in Louisiana, where Black Catholics could not attend White churches in areas that had a Catholic church for Black Catholics. If there was no Black Catholic Church, African Americans who attended the White church had to sit in a segregated section of the church and only receive Communion after all the White parishioners had first received the Eucharist. This was a practice that existed at Holy Trinity until the establishment of Epiphany 1923, and at St. Mary’s until the establishment of St. Joseph’s in 1914.
John Thompson, the Georgetown basketball coach, experienced this sort of discrimination as a boy when his family visited relatives in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Eventually he came to the conclusion, “The priest was saying Jesus loves everybody the same, but I had to go to Communion second after the white folks. You’re telling me one thing about God and Jesus, and you’re practicing another thing. That was the first time I recognized racism in the Catholic Church.”[42]
Merton regarded discrimination within the Body of Christ in Louisiana similarly. “For Merton, this meant that the Eucharist—'the sacrament of love that binds us together’ and manifests Christ’s love for all humankind—had been weaponized as an instrument of disunity and hate, ‘the ultimate blasphemy.’”[43]
[1] Bernard Cook, “Holy Trinity Parish and Race: An Overview (Pt. II),” https://www.curavirtualis.org/post/holy-trinity-parish-and-race-an-overview-pt-2, Peter J. Albert, “Holy Trinity History, Pt. I, The Founding of Epiphany Catholic Church (1923-25) and the Reconciliation Service for Holy Trinity and Epiphany Parishioners (1994),”
https://www.curavirtualis.org/post/holy-trinity-history-pt-i, and “Holy Trinity History, Pt. II, A 1960 Account by Gertrude Turner Waters of the Founding of Epiphany Roman Catholic Church,” https://www.curavirtualis.org/post/holy-trinity-history-pt-ii.
[2]“Our History since 1858,” St. Augustine’s Catholic Church, https://saintaugustine-dc.org/history
[3] James Gibbons (1834-1921) was born in Baltimore. His parents were from Ireland. He was Apostolic Vicar to North Carolina from 1868 to 1872 and Bishop of Richmond from 1872 to 1877. He served as Archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 until he died in 1921. Pope Leo XIII made him a Cardinal in 1886.
[4]Stephanie Shapiro, “St. Cyprian,” The Washington Post, October 13, 1983. Amended with information from Carol Sorgen, “A History of Holy Comforter St, Cyprian Parish, https://hcscchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/HCSC-History-1.pdf
“Holy Comfoter-St. Cyprian Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.)”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Comforter-St._Cyprian_Catholic_Church_(Washington,_D.C.).
[5] Carol Sorgen, “A History of Holy Comforter St, Cyprian Parish, https://hcscchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/HCSC-History-1.pdf
[6] Stephanie Shapiro.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Comforter-St._Cyprian_Catholic_Church_(Washington,_D.C.)
[8]St. Teresa of Avila, Washington, D.C., https://stachurchdc.org/history
[9]Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church DC, https://olphsedc.com
[10]St. Teresa of Avila, Washington, D.C., https://stachurchdc.org/history
[11] See Note 1 above.
[12] Morris J. MacGregor, The Emergence of a Black Catholic Community: St. Augustine’s in Washington, (Washington DC, The Catholic University of America Press, 1999), p. 71.
[13] Ibid., p. 209.
[14] The History of Holy Redeemer Parish, http://holyredeemerchurchdc.org/hrc/index.php/history/parish-history
[15] Fr. Raymond Kemp, e-mail to Bernard Cook, July 6, 2022. See Michelle Boorstein, “Shrinking Jesuit population forces closing of D.C.’s St. Aloysius Gonzaga parish,” Washington-Post, June 19, 2012
[16]Church of the Incarnation, https://incarnationdc.org/history
[17] Francis Neale was acting president of Georgetown in 1808 and 1809, and president from 1809 to 1812.
[18]Anonymous Autograph Manuscript, History of St.Mary’s Alexandria VA, Folder 8, Box 81, (325m1-325z4), (Jesuit) Maryland Province Archives, Georgetown University. The historical note states that the Jesuits of Georgetown College, served the Catholics of Alexandria from the 1790s until Fr. Fairclough became the resident priest in 1818. In addition to Fr. Neale, the Catholics of Alexandria were served until 1818, by the Jesuit Fathers Anthony Coleman, E. Fenwick, Gratia, B. Fenwick, R. Baxter, and others whose names were not recorded. After the departure of Fr. Fairclough in 1831, Fr. John Smith, S.J. served from 1831 until 1837, Fr Stephen Dubuisson, S.J., from 1837 to 1841, Frs. James Power, S.J., and Fr. James Moore, S.J., in 1841. Fr. Rodger Dietz, S.J., in 1842, Fr. Benjamin Young, S.J., in 1843, Fr. C. Stonesteet (?), S.J., in 1844, Fr. Ignatius Coombs, S.J., in 1845, Fr. John Aiken, S.J., from 1846 until 1850, Fr. Joseph M. Finotti, S.J., from 1850 until 1852, Fr. George Villiger, S.J., from 1852 until 1854, Fr. John E. Blox, S.J., from 1854 until 1856, Fr. Peter Kroes, S.J., from 1856 until 1872, and Fr. Dennis O’Kane, S.J., from 1872 to 1891.
[19] Dubuisson was president of Georgetown in 1825 and 1826.
[20]St. Mary’s Website, https://stmaryoldtown.org/historical-timeline/
[21]Peter J. Albert, “Holy Trinity History, Pt. I, The Founding of Epiphany Catholic Church (1923-25) and the Reconciliation Service for Holy Trinity and Epiphany Parishioners (1994),” https://www.curavirtualis.org/post/holy-trinity-history-pt-i and
Bernard Cook, “Holy Trinity Parish and Race: An Overview (Pt. II), https://www.curavirtualis.org/post/holy-trinity-parish-and-race-an-overview-pt-2
[22] See Bernard Cook, “Holy Trinity Parish and Race: An Overview (Pt. I), https://www.curavirtualis.org/post/holy-trinity-parish-and-race-an-overview-pt-i
[23] Anonymous Autograph Manuscript, History of St.Mary’s Alexandria VA, Folder 8, Box 81, (325m1-325z4), (Jesuit) Maryland Province Archives, Georgetown University. It is highly probable that both the original chapel and the current church, St. Mary’s, erected in the 1820’s, were built utilizing the labor of enslaved workers. It is also probable that at Holy Trinity in Georgetown both the original church, now Ignatius Chapel, and the present church erected in the 1850’s were built utilizing the labor of enslaved workers. However, records which might document the involvement of the labor of enslaved workers in these projects have not been found.
[24] Rothman, Adam, “Georgetown University and the Business of Slavery,” Washington History, Fall 2017, Vol. 29, 2:21.
[25] Katherine Jackson manifest, December 6, 1838, Georgetown Slavery Archives, https://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/2 .
[26] For an account of this see Bernard Cook, “Maryland Jesuits and Slavery, Pt. II,” https://www.curavirtualis.org/post/maryland-jesuits-and-slavery-pt-ii
[27] From “Slave Market of America,” 1836. Library of Congress. Printed in Joshua D. Rothman and Benjamin Skolnik, “The Brig Named Uncas: the story of an all-American slave ship,” Slate.com, December 4, 2021. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/12/domestic-slave-trade-us-history-uncas.html
[28] Anonymous Autograph Manuscript, History of St.Mary’s Alexandria VA, Folder 8, Box 81, (325m1-325z4), (Jesuit) Maryland Province Archives, Georgetown University.
[29] Miller, Leslie, “St. Mary’s 225th Anniversary highlights History of Catholicism in Virginia,” The Arlington Catholic Herald, September 30, 2020,
[30] See Bernard Cook, “Holy Trinity Parish and Race: An Overview (Pt. I),” https://www.curavirtualis.org/post/holy-trinity-parish-and-race-an-overview-pt-i and Bernard Cook, “Holy Trinity Parish and Race: An Overview (Pt. II),” https://www.curavirtualis.org/post/holy-trinity-parish-and-race-an-overview-pt-2
[31] “Establishing St. Joseph Church,” Alexandria Times, June 10, 2010. Vernon Miles, “Alexandria: St. Joseph Catholic Church Celebrates its 100th Anniversary,” Connection Newspapers, November 19, 2015.
[32] “National Register of Historic Places Registration Form,” US Dept. of the Interior National Park Service, NPS Form 10-800, OMB No. 1024-0018, pp. 12 and 292.
[33] “Establishing St. Joseph Church,” Alexandria Times, June 10, 2010, https://www.alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/historic/info/attic/2010/Attic20100610StJosephChurch.pdf
[34] Stephen J. Ochs, Desegregatng the Altar: The Josephites and the Struggle for Black Priests, 1871-1960, (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1993).
[35] “Establishing St. Joseph Church,” Alexandria Times, June 10, 2010.
[36] Peter Albert of Holy Trinity’s History Committee provided the following: Gertrude Turner Waters, "Historical Sketch - Epiphany Church" (undated, privately held) states, "Father Bernard A. Lyons S.S.J. succeeded Father Schaefer in 1931. Father Lyons was with us during the Depression. He suffered greatly. He moved in behind the sacristy in order to economize." "History of Afro-Americans in Establishing Epiphany Roman Catholic Church, Georgetown, D.C." (compiled by Cynthia E. Jackson, Dorothy Harris Gray, and Mary Waters) lists Gertrude Turner Waters as a founding member of Epiphany. Gertrude Turner Waters died in April 1973, her husband was Neville Waters Sr., her son was Neville Jr, and her grandson, Neville Waters III.
[37] “Sharing their Charisms: Josephite Society of the Sacred Heart,” Arlington Catholic Herald, August 11-24, 2022, p. 11.
[38] Comments of (Mrs.) Cecilia Braveboy, May 11, 2022, submitted to Suzanne Noonan, Holy Trinity History Committee.
[39] The area had previously been named Nauck after John D. Nauck, a former Confederate soldier turned land developer. In 2019, the Nauck Civic Association voted to change the name of the area to Green Valley. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauck_Virginia
[40] The area had previously been named Nauck after John D. Nauck, a former Confederate soldier turned land developer. In 2019, the Nauck Civic Association voted to change the name of the area to Green Valley. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauck_Virginia
[41]History of Our Lady Queen of Peace, https://www.ourladyqueenofpeace.org/our-history.html
[42] John Thompson, I came as a Shadow, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2020), pp. 18-20.
[43] Judith Valente, “Thomas Merton’s deep devotion to the Eucharist — and how it called him to radical love,” America, May 19, 2022. St. Paul, too, would have had something to say. After all, for him, charity was the prime virtue (I Corinthians 13:13).