Black, White and Catholic in Evanston

By Michael Wamble
STAFF WRITER

What’s black, white and Catholic all over?

Since the Great Migration of southern blacks to the North, the answer to that question hasn’t been archdiocesan parishes within the city limits.

Many, but not all, of the 43 predominantly black parishes to play a role in Black Catholic Convocation 2000, Nov. 3-4 at DeLaSalle Institute, are located on the South Side or West Side of Chicago.

When factored in, said Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Perry, there are over 75 parishes throughout the archdiocese with some measurable black Catholic presence, albeit small in number.

“The issues you find there among black Catholics are their desire for more participation in the parish and for the parish that feels more inclusive to people of color. These are the same issues we’ve gone through before,” said Bishop Perry, at a recent press conference on the convocation, in reference to efforts to desegregate Catholic churches decades ago.

The bishop continued, “These issues never seem to die.”

At Chicago’s northern border rests Evanston, a community that prides itself on bucking the “hyper-segregation” that the bishop said has been a part of Chicago’s demographic makeup.

For St. Nicholas parishioner Margo Butler, understanding what it means to be a black and Catholic in Evanston has started her on a journey of discovery within her family and her ethnically diverse parish. It has meant forming new relationships.

St. Mary parishioner Jane Colleton likens being a black Catholic to being part of a large, universal family coming together for a group portrait.

“When people show photos of the family album, you want to see someone that looks like you in the picture,” she said.

No Woman Is An Island

Margo Butler

Margo Butler felt disconnected.

Yes; there are black people in Evanston. And yes; there are Catholics in Evanston. But putting the two together in folks’ minds wasn’t easy.

Geographically, Butler was separated from the majority of the 100,000 black Catholics in the Chicago Archdiocese, being neither a South Sider nor a West Sider.

That feeling was coupled with a sense that she didn’t belong to the wider (or whiter) Catholic Church.

What Butler didn’t know was that there were baptized and former black Catholics all around her.

Only a few months ago Butler learned that fellow Evanstonian, Pauline Williams, had been baptized Catholic. Moreover, Williams was a member of the last class to graduate St. Monica School, the first black Catholic school in Chicago.

“I thought she was a nice A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) lady. I didn’t know she was [baptized] Catholic until now,” said Butler.

Williams had known Butler’s mother before Butler was born.

Due to Williams’ negative experience after introducing herself to a local pastor, she did not enter another Catholic church for 65 years.

More conversations revealed secrets closer to home for Butler when one afternoon she discovered a nephew also had been baptized Catholic. Once again, because of a lack of inclusion, the Catholic Church lost another black suburban member. Slowly, Butler pieced together these revelations with that voice from within that began her search for spiritual fulfillment.

When Butler attended the annual Augustus Tolton banquet in 1995, an event named in honor of the first black Catholic priest in Chicago, she was “overwhelmed.”

“I’d never seen so many black Catholics in one place,” said Butler.

According to documents from the Black Catholic Convocation’s steering committee, there are 43 predominantly black archdiocesan parishes. At a recent press conference, 27 additional parishes were noted to have a measurable black Catholic presence. St. Nicholas didn’t make either list.

As a “cradle Catholic,” Butler said she had never seen black Catholic parishes and most black Catholics she knew “went to church and then went home. Period.”

That’s not what Butler wanted. A voice inside her was calling her to do more; exactly what, she wasn’t sure.

Maybe, like Williams, she would have to leave the Catholic Church to feed her hunger for expressions of black spirituality.

“I went to a Baptist women’s group retreat in Wisconsin and an A.M.E. quad conference. I was searching. For what, I didn’t know.”

But she was looking at Gospelfests and at black Protestant churches “just to hear the choir.”

Together, these experiences amplified the call inside her to create something for local black Catholics who felt disconnected from the larger ethnic, religious community.

In Evanston, Butler sent out invitations to 20-30 people to meet at her home to talk.

“We didn’t have a program or agenda beyond that.”

Meetings began to take form with predetermined topics and guest speakers. Through word of mouth, Butler began to network.

“I would sit at events at an empty table at St. Nick’s and once a black guy came over to talk. He gave me names like Father John Calicott, pastor of Holy Angels on the South Side, and Father Tom McQuaid. That’s when I found out about a group in Lake County [Black Catholics of Lake County],” she said.

A survey was created, Butler said, “to check the pulse of area black Catholics.” Data revealed that 57 percent had been raised Catholic and one out of three had attended Catholic schools.

The result of the survey and Butler’s work was the formation of Evanston Area Black Catholics. The two-year-old organization that started out to promote fellowship has branched out in other activities including: supporting black seminarians at nearby Mundelein and attending conferences across the country focused on ministry in black parishes.

At St. Nicholas, there are Haitians, Filipinos, Africans, whites and a growing Hispanic population. While the parish is often described as a “multicultural” area, for Butler, multicultural is more than a matter of toleration, but of participation.

That is what motivated Butler, despite parish hurdles, to nudge St. Nicholas’ first celebration of Kwanzaa, a traditional African-American holiday last December.

“Some people think just because you have black and white Catholics worshipping together: problem solved. No. There is more to be done than standing in the same pew, in the same church.”

‘We need pins’

Butler is not alone in her struggle to remain connected to a sense of being a black Catholic outside of the city.

Jane Colleton, like Butler, is an Evanston-area black Catholic, who knows what it is like to feel isolated.

“This group really is Margo’s baby,” said Colleton, a parishioner of St. Mary Parish, just north of St. Nicholas.

One of the results from the survey that most struck Colleton, was the differing comfort levels between black Catholics raised in black parishes and those black Catholics who were just a fraction of the parish population.

“I found that really interesting. People raised in predominantly black churches felt very assured in the faith as Catholics but others didn’t have that same sense of their own Catholicism. I think there is something to seeing yourself reflected in the parish,” Colleton said.

Although the exterior of St. Mary Church received landmark status in 1978, the interior has undergone several modifications, including the addition of artistic renderings of angels. The angels share a common skin color: white.
Colleton said she has asked her parish’s art and environment committee why all of the depictions are white.

“I asked, ‘Why aren’t any of the angels black?’ And I was told that there aren’t any black angels,” she said.

“‘Besides,’ they said. ‘What difference does it make what color the angels are?’”

At that point, Colleton lifted her voice and suggested, “Then why not make them orange?”

At other times, emotions can be stirred by less blatant remarks at the local crafts store.

Colleton recalled a salesperson pointing out store items that would make “great first Communion gifts” to a woman ahead of her in a checkout aisle.

“The woman, who was white, told the sales clerk, also white, ‘No, thank you. I’m not Catholic.’ When it came my turn, the clerk never mentioned the item to me,” said Colleton. “She never even considered that I might be Catholic.”

At times, Colleton said, she wishes there could be something that could visibly proclaim her Catholicism.

“Maybe a pin or … something. I know that sounds hokey. I know we can’t [as black Catholics] walk around everyday with ash crosses on our foreheads, but it can be so hard to identify each other,” she said.

Not feeling a part of the group, Colleton said, caused her to doubt her feelings on certain issues that help shape what it means to be Catholic.

If you listen to the media, the St. Mary parishioner noted, one might think blacks as a collective believe women should be able to practice abortion. That, of course, is not true.

“But it seemed like that,” Colleton said. “For a long time, I felt as though I was the only pro-life black woman living on the North Shore. It took a while to realize that I had been manipulated by the numbers often quoted on the other side. Those numbers can cause a sense of isolation.”

In 1996, Colleton, along with her husband, Don, attended the National Black Pro-Life Unity Conference held at the Hillside Holiday Inn.

Nationally, since 1997, black Catholics have had an organization of their own, the National Black Catholic Apostolate for Life (NBCAL). The NBCAL is headed by Franciscan Father James Goode and is based out of the New York Archdiocese. The group has chapters throughout the United States.

Though the conference was non-denominational, many prominent black Catholics including former presidential candidate and U.S. Ambassador Alan Keyes and Dolores Grier, vice-chancellor of the Archdiocese of New York, were among the event’s highlights.

“It shouldn’t have had to bring it out of me, but knowing consciously that other people were also passionate about life has helped me become braver in speaking out,” Colleton said.

“Now it is something that I am very proud of,” she said.

Buttons, T-shirts and pins were sold at the conference that proudly proclaimed participants were ‘Black and pro-life.’ Still no such pins exist making a similar statement of being ‘Black and Catholic.’

Talking to Williams or Colleton or Butler, one is reminded that there has always been a black community in Evanston.

But unlike their counterparts living in black neighborhoods in Chicago, in Evanston black Catholics have a greater sense of being a minority group within a minority group.

“Coming through the 1960s, we integrated the schools and every white person had ‘a good black friend,’” said Butler. It is something evidenced in photos in the township’s schools, both public and Catholic.

“Slowly, through that process, there probably [developed] a reluctance to be aware of, or involved in, the black Catholic experience.”

Both Butler and Colleton will have active roles in the upcoming convocation: Butler, as a member of the event’s steering committee, and Colleton as a parish delegate.

But as dictated by the convocation’s structure, Colleton can vote on proposals while her husband can not because he is white.

“Don has probably done more work than others I have seen [on the Black Catholic Convocation]. And I can say it did pain him a bit to be excluded,” Colleton said.

While one might expect her to be outraged, this wife said she understands the decision-making limits place on her husband.

“But in a way it is putting your money where you’re mouth is. It is very responsible. It is a sign of us [black Catholics] taking responsibility for our own space.”

Responsibility is also a prominent theme in the advice Butler has to her fellow black Catholic brothers and sisters outside the city limits.

“If you don’t feel you’re being represented in the parish liturgy, do something. Join the parish liturgical committee,” said Butler.

“Don’t complain about the music; join the choir,” said Butler. “We, in Evanston, need to become more involved in the ministries of our own churches.”

So, what does it mean to be black and Catholic in Evanston?

For Butler, it is a question that is still difficult to answer.

“I am still in the process of forming an answer that makes sense,” said Butler.

“Historically, black Catholics woke up right after the civil rights movement and Vatican II. But if you’re not involved in a black parish, you don’t even know about it. You don’t see it, you don’t feel it,” she said, remembering her time disconnected.

“But once you know your history, you understand the importance of being black and Catholic.”