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

This paper, “Catechizing Communities: Charlottesvillian Parochial Schools and the Desegregation and Integration of Charlottesvillian Catholicism,” narrates the desegregation and integration of Charlottesville’s parochial schools, at the Redemptorist-run Black Catholic Saint Margaret Mary and Diocese of Richmond-run White Catholic Holy Comforter. Despite Charlottesville’s troubled history with race, Chrlottesvillian Black and White Catholic laity, with the Redemptorists and Diocese of Richmond, collaboratively and rather smoothly desegregated and integrated their parochial schools. I utilize primary oral historical interviews of former students of these Charlottesvillian parochial schools, with archival research, to show how their laity and clergy created a progressive Catholic identity that sought to erase the Church’s historical racism and then contemporary controversies and mixed feelings on school desegregation and integration, while using parochial education to evangelize Black Charlottesvillians. Ultimately, it serves as a more peaceful Southern counterpoint of comparison to the strife of Bostonian schools’ bussing and desegregation and integration.