In three key moments of religion and race in the United States—1830s, 1920s, and 1950s—religious organizations shaped the racial landscape. Two papers consider the role of Catholicism in resistance through integration and labor movements and one considers the role of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Two papers analyzes the location of African Americans and one Mexican Americans, facilitating a constructive conversation around religion and race for the conference theme of Freedom.
Abstract:
This paper examines the critical yet understudied role of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church within North America’s National Negro Convention Movement from 1830 to 1864, exploring how this Black religious institution functioned as a pivotal site for ontological resistance against the systematic violence of American antiblackness. By investigating the transnational religious networks, theological frameworks, and political strategies that emerged through this movement, I aim to contribute to ongoing scholarly conversations about how religion has historically functioned as both a source of meaning-making and a practical resource for communities navigating precarious existence. Drawing on AAR’s presidential theme of “Freedom,” this analysis bridges historical, critical, and constructive methodologies to demonstrate how antebellum Black religious actors developed sophisticated strategies of survival and resistance that transcended regional and national boundaries throughout North America.
The 1920s and 1930s were tumultuous for Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans (referred to as Mexicans), especially in the U.S. Mexican Catholics had to contend with racial and economic discrimination, Protestant Americanization efforts in the Wesley Settlement House movement, and the Great Depression era in North Texas (Dallas-Fort Worth). Despite these obstacles, Mexicans practiced “resistance” Catholicism to construct their cultural and religious identities. Their resistance centered on their identities as Mexicans and católicos, which affirmed, maintained, and passed down cultural and religious traditions against Anglo-Protestant society. Specifically, this resistance examines the overlooked interactions of Mexican Catholic women and the Settlement House movement. Additionally, resistance was in Mexican labor organizations, and the short-lived Iglesia Católica Ortodóxa Apostólica Nacional Mexicana (ICAM), also known as the Mexican Catholic Apostolic Church. As a result, Mexican Catholics protested segregated public spaces, and affirmed their place in society.
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.