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The Emergence of A Black Catholic Community: by Morris MacGregor

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The first chapel and school of what would become Saint Augustine Church. Placed under the spiritual Protection of Blessed Martin de Porres, the foundations were hand dug by parishioners in 1864. William A. & Mary Dyson Plummer, born in Georgetown in the 1860s, attended the Blessed Martin de Porres school, were married at St. Augustine's in 1888 and remained parishioners there until their deaths. Pictured here with their eight children, who were all baptized and educated at St. Augustine's; Agnes Plummer Rogers (right) in 1998 continued to worship at St. Augustine's occasionally. Early St. Augustine parishioner Thomas Wyatt Turner was organizer of the Federation of Colored Catholics (1924) and a leading crusader for social justice in the American church. Charles E. and Anna May Stewart with nine of their children. Mr. Stewart was a great-grandson of Henry Warren and great-nephew of Jane Smallwood), both founding members of the parish. Hired out to employers in a practice common at the time, by 1837 Warren, a twenty-eight-year old tinner and musician, was able to earn enough money beyond the amount stipulated by his master to buy his own freedom from Joel Crittenden of Georgetown. In April of the same year he purchased the freedom of his wife, Maria Neal, for the nominal sum of one dollar from Amelia Sewell and celebrated the day by having his marriage officially registered. Four years later he was able to purchase the freedom of his thirteen-year-old daughter Jane (pp. 112, 7). Seated among her children (bottom center) is Caroline Duckett Wade, daughter of the Duckett/DuKette family, which had worshipped at St. Augustine's since the 1870's and produced Father Norman DuKette, a son of St. Augustine's and one of the first Black priests in the United States. Mrs. Wade’s children, all baptized and educated at St. Augustine’s, include Father Francis G. Wade, S.V.D. (ordained 1934) and Mothers M. Angela and M. Pius, both Oblate Sisters of Providence. Replacing the original Chapel of Blessed Martin de Porres, the first St. Augustine Church, 1876-1947, was located at Fifteenth and L Streets, NW. Built through the work and spiritual commitment of several generations of Black Catholics (180), the magnificent building reflected the worldview of this prosperous parish, a spiritual and cultural center in the nation's capital, already numbering over 2,000 members and on the threshold of even more phenomenal growth (98-99). Three Sons of Saint Augustine's, with Msgr. Alonzo Olds, pastor of St. Augustine's from 1919 to 1957 (295, 517). St. Augustine's Dr. Paul Cooke, professor of English at Miner's and later president of the District's Teacher College, was a charter member and secretary of the Catholic Interracial Council of Washington. Organized in 1944 by thirty-six black and white laymen distinguished by their positions in government and academe, the council…merged black and white activists in a common effort to change attitudes and to influence Catholic institutions through education, dialogue and witness p.262). Educator Mary Cooke Buckner, like her nephew, Dr. Paul Cooke (above right), was a Saint Augustine parishioner and one of the early leaders of the Catholic Interracial Council of Washington, organized in 1944, as well as the Catholic protest movement (304). The first National Congress of Colored Catholics (detail from group photograph) opened on New Year's Day, 1899, in Saint Augustine Church. Eighty-four delegates, chosen by Black parishes and societies across the country, met to discuss the 'sufferings, wants and aspirations' of Black Catholics and to collaborate on a plan for improvement of their religious and social circumstances. Saint Augustine Church was selected as the site for this historic meeting because in addition to being located in the capital, it was the largest Black Catholic Church in the country (131-4). Home to the Saint Augustine parish since 1961, this English Gothic style church, built in 1894, has been considered to be one of the most beautiful churches in Washington. (320-21). Born in 1908, St Augustine archivist Pauline Jones had grown up among parishioners whose memories encompassed the building of the old church in the 1870s, whose after-dinner stories charted the rise and fall, trials and triumphs of Saint Augustine's people. Always active in parish affairs, in 1961 she came across a box of jumbled yellow papers, apparently intended for the trash, and realized that all around her, the testaments to Saint Augustine's rich heritage were being literally thrown away.(457). Shown here as the woman she became in time, with D.C. Mayor Marion Barry in the 1980s (399).

 
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The Emergence of a Black Catholic Community:
St. Augustine's  in  Washington  by Morris MacGregor
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Photographs from MacGregor's "The Emergence of a Black Catholic Community: Saint Augustine's in Washington"
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Photographs from the Book
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