Faith of our founder

An unforgiving sun baked the small group of people standing in the quiet cemetery in downstate Quincy.

Most of those who congregated that summer day in 1997 were black, a sight uncommon in this sleepy river town. Many hailed from elsewhere, from small towns and from cities such as Philadelphia, New York and New Orleans. But the majority drove down Interstate 57 from Chicago.

They traveled to celebrate the life of a priest who, when he arrived in Chicago in 1889, forever changed Catholic history.

Belleville Bishop Wilton Gregory, a Chicago native, stood in private prayer before the large, marble cross that serves as the grave’s marker.

Bishop Gregory (who two years later would become vice-president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops,) was paying his respects to Father Augustus Tolton, the first recognized black priest in the UnitedStates on the centennial anniversary of his death.

This graveyard event is representative of but one page in a chapter of the rich history of black Catholics in Chicago.

Black Catholic history in Chicago too often begins with Tolton and the Catholics he shepherded in the basement of Old St. Mary’s Church in the early 1890s. But almost a century before Chicago’s first archbishop, Patrick Feehan, brought Tolton from his Quincy parish to Chicago, another black Catholic settled this land.

His name was Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable.

That DuSable, a Haitian trader and explorer, was black was not lost on many historians. That he was Catholic had been deemed irrelevant until a candid remark by Cardinal George in late 1998 became a catalyst to correct that historical omission.

On a hot Saturday in September 1998, about 300 black Catholics, lay, clerical and religious, met at St. James Parish on the South Side to discuss the image and role of black Catholic men in the church.

The gathering, co-sponsored by Deliverance, a newsletter for black Catholics, and Chicago Area Black Deacons, offered suggestions to Cardinal George for policies and practices of church-affiliated institutions and advocated multi-racial images of Christ.

The mood was, at times, tense.

These Catholics, clearly offended by images of the divine “angels and saints enfleshed (only) as white,” pulled no punches with the cardinal.

And Cardinal George didn’t hesitate to push back.

“The founder of Chicago, as you know,” said the cardinal, “was Catholic.”

The comment was a spark for Deliverance’s publisher Sheila Bourelly. A master of divinity student at Loyola University, Bourelly wanted to re-establish DuSable’s role in Chicago Catholic history.

In an interview last September, Bourelly said she began her research unsure of what she would discover about the trader’s Catholicity. “Was DuSable a devout Roman Catholic?” Bourelly said she asked herself. “I found the answer was yes.”

Eventually, Bourelly’s crusade became an archdiocesan campaign, and it answered many questions about DuSable. However, it also raised another: What difference does it make to proclaim DuSable as a Catholic? It was, after all, just another detail about the man.

However, it was a small detail that meant a lot to Chicagoans—especially black Catholics. In one sense, it is a detail that solidifies their valued roles in Chicago’s—and the nation’s—history.

Other “details” Bourelly’s research documented included DuSable’s background as a student of St. Thomas School in the St. Marc area of Haiti, as well as written reports from an area priest that describe his great compassion for people.

In New Orleans, DuSable lived at local Catholic youth centers. Baptismal records also show that DuSable passed on his Catholic faith to his daughter.

Over 180 years after his death, a renewed focus on the trader’s spiritual side is credited with giving the fledgling community its start as a peaceful, multi-ethnic settlement.

As early as Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair, the Catholic Church lobbied to include the faith’s role in the city’s founding. But rather than highlighting DuSable, it focused solely on the explorer Father Marquette.

As part of the process leading to November’s Black Catholic Convocation 2000, parishioners are being asked: “How do we make our black religious and Roman Catholic traditions attractive to other Catholics and unchurched people in our communities?”

Should proclaiming the fact that Chicago’s founder was black and Catholic be a part of such an outreach?

“Yes,” says Bourelly.

“This is one of the evangelization tools that black Catholics haven’t utilized to its best ability,” said Bourelly. “Many of us don’t know our history,” she said, noting the continued interest in Benedictine Father Cyprian Davis’ seminal book, “The History of Black Catholics in the United States,” published in 1990.

During a recent visit to Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union, Davis said one of his purposes for writing the book was to give black Catholics something they’d never really had: a sense of their pivotal role in the development of Catholicism in the U.S.

“Black Catholics were present at the oldest establishment of Catholics in the continental U.S. at St. Augustine in Florida in the middle of the 16th century,” said Davis. “When you look at the history of other cities like Los Angeles, you see in Los Angeles a city who proudly points out that it was founded by Spanish-speaking settlers who were Indians and blacks, and a mixture of both.”

Davis added, “The historical roles of blacks can’t be denied, but they have, and continue to be overlooked.”

While DuSable is mentioned in Davis’ book (two paragraphs), the Benedictine was clearly curious about Chicago’s recent celebration of a Catholic who origins he wrote as being “unknown.”

Last September, Bourelly and Sheila Adams, archdiocesan director of African-American ministry, designed a program of educational tools connecting local resources from the DuSable Museum and the Chicago Historical Society to help reclaim DuSable’s faith for Catholic schools and churches.

After the archdiocesan celebration of DuSable, city and state proclamations for the first time declared the explorer the founder of Chicago. Previously, he was officially known only as the city’s “father.” Earlier this year, plans were confirmed for a 3.5-acre DuSable Park between Ogden Avenue and the Chicago River.

Even the Chicago Defender, a newspaper focused on the city’s African-American community, mentioned that DuSable was Roman Catholic.

Although there was no official acknowledgement of a correlation between the naming of the park and the DuSable series, Bourelly believes the public display by Chicago Catholics played a role. “The fact is the decision was made after our DuSable celebration.”

For Bourelly, that is an important detail.

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