Racial Justice and the People of God: The Second Vatican Council, the Civil Rights Movement, and American Catholics

Abstract

Catholic participation in the southern civil rights movement culminated at Selma in March 1965. As was customary in much of the South, Selma's Catholic churches were strictly segregated, with the priests in charge of the African American “mission” parish ignored by the city's other clergy. (One attempt at integration of the city's “white” parish by a group of African American Catholic teenagers met with fierce resistance.) In addition, the bishop of Montgomery, Thomas Toolen, attempted to prevent northern Catholics from responding to the pleas of civil rights activists for assistance, maintaining that outsiders were “out of place in these demonstrations—their place is at home doing God's work… .” Regardless, priests from fifty different dioceses, lay people, and nuns flocked to Alabama to join in the marches.