Catechizing Communities: Charlottesvillian Parochial Schools and the Desegregation and Integration of Charlottesvillian Catholicism

Racial conflict defines Charlottesville’s historical memory. Empty plinths once containing proud statues of slaveowners and Confederate generals haunt the city’s streets. The Unite the Right scarred the city’s contemporary history. Yet, during the 1950s and 1960s the era of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement, Charlottesville’s Catholics united around desegregating and integrating their public schools. The city’s two Catholic parishes, the Redemptorist-run Black Catholic Saint Margaret Mary and the Diocese of Richmond-run White Catholic Holy Comforter, united their children who attended each other’s schools. Not only did such progressive efforts, along with the quality of the education, convert many Black Charlottesvilians via Saint Margaret Mary and its school, it would also influence the Diocese of Richmond to open Branchlands, an integrated parochial school.   

The Redemptorists, in collaboration with the Diocese of Richmond, founded Saint Margaret Mary in 1953 in the Charlottesvillian Black neighborhood, Rose Hill. The Redemptorists largely selected Rose Hill because the neighborhood contained a segregated Black public school (Moore to Stevens, 1953). Schooling influences every part of this story. The Redemptorists and Diocese of Richmond not only wanted to convert Black Charlottesvillians, but also to correct past racial injustices of the Church through desegregating and integrating Charlottesvillian Catholicism (Driscoll to Walsh, 1954). The Redemptorists opened a parochial school at Saint Margaret Mary, inviting Redemptoristine nuns to instruct the Black students increasingly enrolling in the school (Chapman 2021). Saint Margaret Mary, through institutions like its parochial school, became an integral component of Rose Hill’s neighborhood identity. Black Catholic families sent their children to receive an education they perceived as better than what was present in Charlottesville's segregated public schools, while also catechizing them as young faithful Catholics (Martin 2024). Saint Margaret Mary’s school created an entire generation of Black Catholic Charlottesvillians. 

Charlottesville’s historically predominantly White Catholic parish, Holy Comforter, had its own parochial school. During the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, the Redemptorists and Diocese of Richmond under Bishops Peter Ireton and John Russell, desegregated and integrated Charlottesville’s parochial schools. Black and White Catholic children, with little resistance, attended each other’s parochial schools. Furthermore, with higher enrollment in the parochial schools and the churches, the Diocese opened a desegregated and integrated school, Branchlands, open to children from kindergarten to Grade 7 (Branchlands Open House Pamphlet 1964). Some issues did occur, such as Charlottesvillian public schools boycotting events with Charlottesvillian parochial schools, financial issues plaguing parents’ abilities to send their children to receive a parochial school education, and resentment from laity against perceived heavyhandedness of their priests and bishops (The Daily Progress, 1955). Nonetheless, desegregation and integration occurred smoothly in Charlottesville’s parochial schools, particularly surprising when one considers the city’s messy conflicts around school desegregation and integration (Lewis and Lassiter 1998). 

My paper, “Catechizing Communities: Charlottesvillian Parochial Schools and the Desegregation and Integration of Charlottesvillian Catholicism,” for the Catholic Studies Unit for the American Academy of Religion’s in-person November Annual Meeting 2025 addresses the proposal, “Catholics and Boston Busing, 50 Years Later.” I utilize primary oral history interviews and archival sources to narrate the history of Charlottesville’s parochial schools during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s and how their exchange of their students desegregated and integrated Charlottesvillian Catholicism. I then argue how the clergy and laity associated with these schools created a progressive Charlottesvillian Catholic identity which sought to erase the Church’s historical racism and then contemporary controversies on school desegregation and integration. Amidst the Massive Resistance hotbed in Charlottesville, Charlottesvillian parochial schools’ desegregation and integration reflect a more peaceful counterpoint. My paper also serves as a counterpoint to Bostonian Catholicism, education, and desegregation and integration. While my paper does not directly address Boston, I believe that it can enrich discussions regarding parochial school desegregation and integration. Whereas Boston descended into conflict and riots, Charlottesville, a Southern city, quietly walked, drove, and bussed children to parochial schools in Saint Margaret Mary, Holy Comforter, and Branchlands. By discussing Charlottesville and its parochial schools, we can better understand Boston’s own controversies around its parochial schools and bussing during the same period, through this comparison of the two. 

The call for proposals for “Catholics and Boston Busing, 50 Years Later” urges proposals to have an eye out for “Black Catholics’ voice and activity.” This I achieved in my paper. While conducting the necessary indepth primary archival research in the Redemptorists’ Archives in Philadelphia and the Catholic Diocesan Archives in Richmond and Arlington, I interviewed numerous Black Catholic Charlottesvillians who had once attended these parochial schools as they underwent desegregation and integration. I have stories, firsthand, of how Black Catholics both responded to and helped to implement the desegregation and integration of their parochial schools and faith in Charlottesville. My Black Catholic interviewees told me stories of how the schools were a place of excellent education and empowered them, perceived as far better than Charlottesville’s segregated public schools. For them, they became more pious and intelligent Catholics because of these schools, as it gave them access into the mystical body of Christ that Protestant churches and public schools dehumanizingly denied to them. My paper builds upon the research of Nichole Flores, who conducted similar oral history work on Saint Margaret Mary and Charlottesville during the Civil Rights Movement in the “Veil of the Temple” project (Flores & De Marcellus 2021). Flores’ work proved crucial for my paper. Additionally, recent innovative scholarly texts like Matthew Cressler’s Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migrations, Shannen Dee Williams’ Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle, and Leah Mickens’ In the Shadow of Ebenezer: A Black Catholic Parish in the Age of Civil Rights and Vatican II, have greatly informed my research for this project in their focus on Black Catholicism, the Civil Rights Movement, and parochial education. My proposed paper would contribute much to any discussion on Catholicism, bussing, and desegregation and integration of education during the Civil Rights Movement, whether in Boston or beyond.