St. Louis Cultural History Project—Fall 2021

St. Louis Jesuit Fighters for Interracial Justice
By Stephen A. Werner, Ph.D.

Whenever I run into race prejudice, the human distaste for people just because their skin happens to have a different color or because they belong to a different race, I wonder where along the line people learned that nonsense. For people aren’t born with race prejudices; they acquire them. —Daniel Lord, 1941

As several Jesuit institutions have grappled in recent years with their histories of ownership of enslaved peoples, it is also important to recall some of the Jesuits fighters against racism in America in the 20th century. The leading Jesuit was John LaFarge, S.J. (1880-1963). He was on the staff of America for thirty-seven years and wrote the book Interracial Justice: A Study of the Catholic Doctrine of Race Relations published in 1937. He also wrote the encyclical Humani generis unitas for Pope Pius XI in response to the rise of Nazism. Tragically, the encyclical, which attacked racism and antisemitism, was never released due to the death of Pius XI in February 1939.

In St. Louis, my hometown, a handful of Jesuits, who knew and supported one another, led the fight against racism. St. Elizabeth’s parish had been created as the African American parish with its pastor William M. Markoe, S.J. (1892-1969, pronounced mar COO) and his brother John P. Markoe, S.J. (1890-1967). They were the leading voices in St. Louis for African American Catholics.

Daniel Lord

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The most important St. Louis figure in the fight was the nationally known Daniel Lord, S.J. (1888-1955). In his career he would write 32 books, 228 pamphlets (that sold 25 million copies), and some 70 plays, musicals and pageants, some with casts of hundreds. Lord grew up in Chicago and first saw prejudice when Jews moved into the neighborhood, and at some point, he and his friends stopped playing with Jewish kids who had been their playmates. Lord would later recall and wince at the sports cheer of his Jesuit high school/college that included both the N. word and St. Ignatius.

Lord graduated college in 1909 and came to St. Louis for his Jesuit studies. In the early 1920s, Lord visited over two dozen institutions run by sisters in St. Louis and in Chicago. The visits became the book Our Nuns published in 1924, an amazing window into the work of Catholic sisters at the time.

He described three institutions for African Americans: St. Elizabeth’s grade school run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart and two run by the African American Oblate Sisters of Providence, St. Frances’ orphanage and St. Rita’s School for young women. Lord was exploring and writing about a world that most Catholics did not know much about.

The Queen’s Work Office

In 1925, Daniel Lord became the National Director of the Sodality Movement in St. Louis. The Sodality promoted the faith of young people and adults at Catholic colleges, high schools, and at many parishes. At its peak in the 1940s there were 13,000 Sodalities in the U.S. and Canada. Lord edited the monthly Sodality magazine, The Queen’s Work.

National Sodality conferences in the early 1930s were held at hotels in Chicago that barred African Americans. Yet Lord quietly brought in the Negro delegates and no one said anything. At his annual Summer School of Catholic Action (SSCA), a week-long conference held each summer at St. Louis Catholic women’s colleges, Lord ignored state laws on segregation and brought in African American members as full participants.

At the SSCA, attendees could earn three hours of college credit from the School of Social Work at the local Jesuit university. Several African Americans received such credit and broke the color barrier some fifteen years before the university officially changed its policy on admitting African Americans.

Daniel Lord and Theater

Since his college days, Lord wrote and produced plays and musicals. Several dealt with issues of race. This interest began when he helped St. Elizabeth’s parish with their annual shows starting in 1929.

My good friend Father Bill Markoe invited me to help with the show St. Elizabeth’s parish in St. Louis was rehearsing. The acts were excellent, and the show needed only threading together. After the second rehearsal, as I watch the marvelous cast start home, I said to Father Markoe, Do you know, when I was working with them tonight, it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t once thought of them as Negroes. They were just darn good singers and dancers and mighty nice people. Father Markoe grinned and patted me on the shoulder, Boy, he said with something like affection in his voice, you’ve arrived.

Lord wrote and produced a musical, Aboard the Showboat, in 1930, building on the interest in the groundbreaking 1927 musical Show Boat. Aboard the Showboat is set on a paddle wheeler and revolves around the African American Montgomery family. Mrs. Montgomery is unhappy and says to her son Curtis. And because we’re Negro, that is all we are supposed to be able to do . . . sing, dance, laugh and make others laugh, play our parts on the stage, and leave the world smiling behind us when we go. . . . I can’t stand it for you, Curtis, I just can’t. She saves up $500 so he can become a surgeon. Oh, son, how badly our people need you and young people like you . . . people who will be trained, educated, ready to lead them, to care for them because they understand and love them. As the plot unfolds another son borrows the money and gambles it away. But in the end Curtis goes off to college.

The show is written without dialects. Significant in the show are the statements of aspirations for better lives. But in expressing these aspirations—it was 1930 after all—Mrs. Montgomery is careful to say that they are not interested in intermarriage, social mingling, or social equality. To modern readers this sounds a bit shocking, but keep in mind that in the 1930s—some ninety years ago—most white women did not dream of social equality.

The Follies

Lord created three shows called Follies, a revue of loosely connected songs, comic skits, and dance numbers with no overall plot. His shows were entertaining and thought-provoking and included scenes with the very talented members of St. Elizabeth’s church. The Social Order Follies of 1936 included this song:

But say, white man,

Tell me to my face,

Ah, say, white man,

Tell me where’s my place?

For I’m a man who lives and loves,

Who clings to home and wife;

Who sings to sleep

The baby on his knee;

Who tells his child

His country made him free.

You struck the chains and bade me lift my face;

But tell me, white man,

Tell me, are the DEPTHS my place?

In the 1960s these songs would have been groundbreaking and controversial, but these were written in 1936!

In his next show, Matrimonial Follies of 1939, included the song Piccaninny, Don’t Grow Up. Although the label for a child would be considered insensitive or offensive today, it was a common term in the past. The song made the point that African Americans wanted to be respected as adults.

Everybody loves a piccaninny;

No one seems to love a colored man.

Honey, ain’t it funny

Ev’rybody’s smiling now.

Stay a little baby, if you can, my honey.

When your eyes are shining bright with laughter,

Why even white folks turn to laugh with you.

‘Course you know it’s winning hearts you’re after;

And it’s funny, how you win ‘em like you do.

White folks ain’t so smiling to your pappy;

Rough’s the road he often has to tread.

Even having you, he can’t be happy,

Feeling storms that beat about his head.

Finally came The Election Year Follies of 1940 with We’ve Much to Give Besides Our Song and It’s My Country Too. The first lamented the fact the African Americans were applauded and wanted for their singing, playing of instruments, and dancing, but once the show ended they were not wanted.

Call upon us and we’ll fight for it,

Live right for it,

For we love it as you.

God has blest it with the fertile field,

Fair stream and richest mountains,

All the lovely gifts still pour

From God’s unfailing fountains.

For all there’s wealth and health past counting.

Here’s our land, we want no others:

May we stand, your friends, your brothers?

God’s Land; Your Land: Our Land too!

Later Efforts

In 1938, Lord’s Queen’s Work published the pamphlet Why are Jews Persecuted? by Joseph N. Moody, an insightful analysis and warning about what was happening in Germany. Moody explores the origins of anti-Semitism and shows the falsehoods behind it. Lord followed it up with his own pamphlet in 1939: Dare We Hate Jews? In which he stated:

I frankly gag at any Christian's demand that I hate anyone—much more that I hate any race of people.

Anti-Semitism is simply anti-Christianity.

It is impossible to understand how a man can hate the Jews and pretend to love the Christ, who commanded His followers to love their enemies with a special love.

In 1944, Claude Heithaus, a protégée of Lord, gave a homily at a Mass of 500 students at the Jesuit university in St. Louis, calling for the university to desegregate. He forced the issue and the university changed its policy, despite segregation being the law of the state. Heithaus would often say Racism is a God-damned thing.

By the late 1940s Lord was no longer at the helm of The Queen’s Work, but his successors continued to publish pamphlets such as The Catholic Church and the Negro (1941) by James Madigan, How to Think About Race (1951) by Louis J. Twomey, and two pamphlets by Frank A. Riley: Fifty Ways to Improve Race Relations: Helping to Erase Race Heresy (1951) and Race Riddles: The Whys of Discrimination (1951?), Who is the Negro? (1956) by Raymond E. Bernard, How I Can Spot My Prejudice (1956) by Bakewell Morrison, and The Catholic Church and the Negro (1962) by Philip Berrigan, S.J., of the famous Berrigan brothers.

In 1948 Lord wrote an article Stop Talking About the Negro Problem.

The wise man treats his fellow man as individuals. He finds minds that match his. He recognizes accomplishments by whom whomsoever performed. He knows that in all races and peoples there are good and bad, saints and criminals, learned and illiterate, wise and foolish, brave and cowardly, refined and loudmouthed, gentlemen and boars. He doesn’t judge a whole race or people on the basis of their lowest specimens. . . . There is a Negro question largely because so many whites yell so many confusing answers and so few bother to listen. If we treat the colored as we treat any other human beings, we have supplied the one sensible answer. Think the Catholic way. Talk almost not at all about the Negro problem. Act toward the Negro as you would act toward any human being, any citizen of the U.S., any child of God.

Epilogue

If alive today what would Daniel Lord think? He would note that progress has been made. The rise and advance of the Negro . . . has been one of the proudest revolutions I have seen. I have watched it as one of the great and hopeful signs of our upward climb. But he would be sad about how much needs yet to be done. Perhaps would he join those white Americans who are trying to wrap their minds around the concepts of systemic racism and racist social structures. He would readily grasp the idea of white privilege. But he would continue to work toward creating a more integrated and tolerant society. As stated above, racial divisions made no sense to him.

For certain, Daniel Lord would sit down and write his next musical: The Social Order Follies of 2021. Would there be a skit on the election of 2020? Or the outrage over Critical Race Theory? Who knows? But there would be a skit on Interracial Justice with an opening song: Why Is This Taking So Long?

Copyright 2021 Stephen A. Werner