The Lourdes Grotto at Saint Martinville

In February 1858, a young girl by the name of Bernadette Soubirous was out gathering firewood with her sister and a friend at a grotto just outside of Lourdes in southwestern France. There appeared to Bernadette a beautiful lady standing in a niche in the rock. The lady wore a white veil and a blue girdle with a golden rose on each foot and a beautiful rosary in her hands. From February to July of that year, the Lady appeared to Bernadette at the grotto eighteen times. These visions, which Bernadette reported, caused much excitement among the people of the region, her parents, her priest, and local authorities. Some doubted although many believed, even the priests of the locale were skeptical, and asked that she inquire of the beautiful lady just who she was. On March 25th, the Lady answered Bernadette by saying “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

Soon after these apparitions, work was begun on a chapel to be erected at the site and in 1864, a statue was created by a local artist based upon Bernadette’s description of the Lady, then known to be our Blessed Mother. Pilgrims began flocking to Lourdes in droves – many came to bathe or to take home water where the miraculous spring at the site. In 1876, the first of several basilicas was erected in the vicinity, where Mass could be celebrated for the growing numbers of pilgrims.

Far away from Lourdes, in France’s old province of la Louisiane, now an American state, a postcard of the grotto at Lourdes brought inspiration to a colored Creole man named Pierre François Hyppolite Martinet (1847-1905). Hyppolite, or “Polite” as he was sometimes called, was a native and resident of Saint Martinville, that beautiful village along the Bayou Teche, where a sculpted Évangéline, much sought by tourists, has long waited for her lover Gabriel. The son of Hyppolite Pierre François Martinet, a native of Belgium, and Marie-Louise Benoit, a free woman of color, Hyppolite was a builder and architect who was married to Fidélice Sidonie Detiége.

Pierre-Francois Hyppolite Martinet (1847-1905)

Inspired by the postcard he saw and filled with devotion to Notre-Dame, he set out in the late 1870s or early 1880s to reconstruct the grotto in his parish church of Saint Martin de Tours. He used materials common to his trade, mud and plaster, to create a beautiful and lasting tribute. Inside the niche was placed a statue like the one at Lourdes, with the following words encircling the head of the Blessed Lady: “Je suis l'Immaculée Conception” (“I am the Immaculate Conception”).

The grotto at l’Église Saint-Martin stands today just as it did over one hundred and thirty years ago. The area surrounding the grotto is filled with ex votos or votive offerings left by the faithful over the years, some of these are dated well over a century ago and many simply bear the word merci in the mother tongue of the dear people of the Teche country. It is a testament to the craftsmanship of its builder and to the faith of him and countless other Catholics of color who have lent their prayers, talents, and treasures to the Church.

Source: Leona Martin Guirard, St. Martinville: The Land of Evangeline in Picture Story, Privately Published, 1950. (Thanks are due to Christophe Landry for the photograph of Hyppolite Martinet and for confirming the details concerning his family history. Merci, mon confrere!)

George W. B. Conrad - President, National Catholic Interracial Federation

George Washington Bryant Conrad (1867-1947)

President, National Catholic Interracial Federation, 1932-1947

Attorney, Preservationist

Born on 22 June 1867 in Xenia, Greene County, Ohio, George W. B. Conrad was an attorney who worked for fifty-two years for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He began his career with the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Railroad (predecessor of the PRR) railroad as a messenger at the Union Depot in Richmond, Indiana in 1882. In 1885, he became a stenographer in the Superintendent’s Office under J. T. Miller. In 1887, he became stenographer and operator in the Engineer’s Office. He was appointed to the same capacity in the freight division office in 1888.

He later left that position to enter Oberlin College at Oberlin, Ohio. He then entered the Law School at the University of Michigan, from which he graduated in 1902. He returned to the railroad as a company attorney.

He was very active in community and civic affairs in Cincinnati. He spearheaded preservation of the residence of author Harriet Beecher Stowe. He was a founder and President of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Home Memorial Association. He ran for the Ohio State House of Representatives in 1938. Conrad was perhaps best known for his active involvement in the Catholic Church. He served as President of the National Catholic Interracial Federation from 1932 until his passing in 1947.

The Catholic Interracial Federation was the brainchild of Father William Markoe, S.J., who along with his fellow Jesuit, Father John LaFarge, stood at the forefront of the Church’s stance on racial justice. The Federation grew out of a split within the Federated Colored Catholics, a black-led organization presided over by Professor Thomas Wyatt Turner, a member of the science faculty at Howard University. The Federation had chapters across the nation, particularly in the South and Midwest.

His father, Thomas A. Conrad, was a native of either Illinois or North Carolina. He was a private in Company B, 5^th U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery. His mother, Elizabeth Jackson, was a native of Ohio. They were married on 20 May 1866 in Xenia, Ohio. Thomas A. Conrad died on 17 September 1924 at the National Military Home in Jefferson, Ohio. Elizabeth Jackson Conrad died on 31 December 1875 in Xenia, Ohio. Thomas was married for a second time to Mary A. Edwards on 18 July 1879.

On 8 June 1910, he married Beatrice Adelaide Cox, a teacher, who was the daughter of Alfred Cox and Cora McKnight. George and his wife Beatrice had a daughter, Elizabeth Conrad, who like her mother became an educator. She was first married to Taswell Thompson, a marriage which produced one son, Taswell Thompson, Jr. She later married Melvin W. Corbin.

Over the course of his eighty years as an attorney, active layman, and preservationist, George Washington Bryant Conrad enjoyed the esteem of those in his community of all races. He died on 11 December 1947 in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio.

 

Sources: Dabney, Wendell Phillips. Cincinnati's Colored Citizens: Historical, Sociological and Biographical (Negro Universities Press, 1926) 242; Smith, J. Clay. Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844-1944 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) 412-413.

Edward LaSalle - Catholic Writer, Interracial Leader

Edward LaSalle, Catholic Writer, Kansas City, Kansas

 

Edward LaSalle was born in Opelousas in 1900 to Pierre and Laurentine LaSalle. He was reared by his grandmother, Mrs. Julia Thompson. He migrated as a young man to Galveston and Beaumont where he furthered his education and eventually married Miss Estelle Baker. He later moved to Denver, where for a time he attended Denver University. Brother LaSalle and his young wife made their home in Kansas City, Kansas where he worked for the government many years as head of the railway post office. He was very active in the National Alliance of Postal Employees, the union organization for black postal workers.

 

As a member of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, he joined He became active with the Catholic Interracial movement and befriended Fathers William Markoe and John LaFarge, champions of Social Justice. He served on the editorial staffs of the Atlantean Magazine, The Chronicle, and The Interracial Review, the latter two being Catholic publications. He was a frequent contributor to The Claverite as well. He served as the first District Deputy of the Northern States from 1930 to 1932 and 1934-1944. He also served as Deputy of the Northern District – South from 1944 to 1946. His was a life spent writing and for that endeavor he had a true God-given gift. He was honored as one of the first two annual recipients of the James J. Hoey Award for Interracial Justice. Edward LaSalle spent his life advancing the cause of interracial justice through his writings which were inspired by his faith. He is a living exemplar of the maxim “The pen is mightier than the sword!”

Source: Scally, M. Anthony. Negro Catholic Writers, 1900-1943: A Bio-Bibliography (Detroit: W. Romig, 1945), 65-67.

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams - Eminent Surgeon & Philanthropic Layman

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (1858-1931) - Eminent Surgeon

Source: The Provident Foundation, http://www.providentfoundation.org/history/gallery.html. 

 

 

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams was born January 18, 1858 in Hollidaysburg, County, Pennsylvania, to Daniel Williams, a free black barber, and Sarah Ann Price. While still young, his family moved to Annapolis, Maryland where he attended the Stanton School. Upon the death of his father, he lived with various relatives before settling in Jamesville, Wisconsin. In Jamesville, he was able to pursue his high school education and graduate from Hare’s Classical Academy in 1878. He studied as an apprentice under Dr. Henry W. Palmer, a prominent surgeon, for two years and in 1880 entered Chicago Medical College. After obtaining his doctorate in medicine in 1883, he opened his private practice in Chicago, Illinois. In 1891, he collaborated with Miss Emma Reynolds to found the Provident Hospital and Nursing Training School in 1891.

Dr. Williams earned lasting renown as s a surgeon on July 10, 1893 when he successfully performed pericardium surgery on a young man named James Cornish who suffered from stab wounds. While serving as surgeon-in-chief at Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., he helped organize the National Medical Association (NMA), which was, at the time, the only national organization open to black physicians. He was selected to serve as its first vice president. In 1898, he married Alice Johnson, a school teacher from Washington D.C., and they returned to Chicago. Upon his return to Provident hospital, he performed another remarkable operation in 1902, successfully suturing a patient’s spleen. He continued to develop his private practice in Chicago and to expand his involvement in community affairs. He continued at Provident until 1912, when he was appointed staff surgeon at St. Luke’s Hospital in Chicago. He continued to practice medicine until he suffered a stroke in 1926. He then moved to the African American vacation community of Idlewild, Michigan, where he lived in retirement until his death on August 4, 1931.

Dr. Williams’ mother had converted to Catholicism after his father’s death in 1867. She sent two of his sisters to study at Saint Frances Academy in Baltimore, which was conducted by the Oblate Sisters of Providence. On November 26, 1930, he was baptized conditionally by Father Joseph Eckert, S.V.D., as there was question as to whether he had ever been baptized. In his will, Dr. Williams gave half of his estate to charity, with the largest bequest going to the N.A.A.C.P. Among the many other recipients was Saint Elizabeth’s Church in Chicago, to which he donated $2.500.00. Saint Elizabeth’s is considered to be the mother church of Black Catholics in Chicago. On August 8, 1931, he was buried from Saint Anselm’s Church in Chicago. In his eulogy, Father Gilmartin remarked “He was an honor to his country and his church; a credit to the people from whom he sprang; a blessing to all humanity.”

Sources: “Dr. Daniel Hale Williams,” The Provident Foundation, http://www.providentfoundation.org/history/williams.html; Chicago Defender, 15 August 1931, page 14; Afro-American (Baltimore), 22 August 1931, page 1.

All Saints Day - La Toussaint: November 1

“Man praying over grave in cemetery at New Roads Louisiana in 1938.” Source: Louisiana Digital Library, http://cdm16313.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/LHP/id/3790/rec/7.

 

“This Far By Faith: Celebrating Black Catholic History” is a new blog dedicated to documenting and sharing the rich history of Black Catholics in the United States. That history, as pioneering scholar Albert Raboteau wrote “is marked by a distinctive experience of religion and race: set apart from other Catholics by race and from other blacks by religion, black Catholics have a heightened sense of the ‘double consciousness’ that, as W. E. B. Du Bois claimed, characterizes African -Americans generally.” Black Catholics have been present since the earliest days of exploration on this continent. They existed and continue to exist in all quarters of the nation and with a range of stories as to how the Faith was inculcated within their communities. This blog highlights the lives of Black Catholic lay leaders, clergy, and religious; as well as the development of their churches, schools, and organizations.

We begin our blogging journey at the outset of the month of November, as the Church celebrates the Feast of All Saints on November 1^st, and the Feast of All Souls on November 2^nd. On these two days, respectively, the Church celebrates all those known and unknown who clothed in robes of white have beheld the beatific vision and likewise all those souls of the faithful departed. Among Catholics, these days are observed by attendance at Mass and particularly by visiting the graves of deceased family members and friends. The priest usually goes to the graveyard as well, to bless the graves.

 

 

All Saints Day, Lacombe, Louisiana, 2009. Source: http://planetkathy.com/blog/?p=408

 

In places such as south Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, which retain many Latin cultural and religious practices, making a day of visiting the cemetery to clean and/or repaint the graves of relatives is common. There, All Saints Day is still often referred to as la Toussaint in French. Decorating the graves with either flowers or immortelles is quite common as well. Immortelles are grave decorations meant to be more permanent than flowers – consisting of either ornate wire wreaths or wreaths made of paper flowers dipped in wax. Customs which are unique to particular areas continue, such as the lighting of candles atop the graves which takes place in the historic cemeteries along Bayou Lacombe as night begins to fall. The old Catholic families there have roots which trace back to Africa, Europe, as well as the indigenous Choctaw people.

 

November has more recently been recognized as Black Catholic History Month, which gives even greater significance to us beginning is this month. We wish you a Happy All Saints Day and Happy Black Catholic History Month!

 

Mrs. Theresa Mouton makes All Saints Day wreaths with crepe paper dipped in wax. St. Martinville, Louisiana, 1982. Source: The Creole State: An Exhibition of Louisiana Folklife (Virtual Exhibit), Louisiana State Museum, http://www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/CSE/creole_home.html