When America was celebrating its centennial yr in 2009, Jim McDermott and I wrote a sequence of articles on notable figures within the journal’s historical past, together with one on John LaFarge, S.J., a longtime editor (together with a four-year stint as editor in chief from 1944 to 1948). Quickly after the article’s publication, I obtained a word from a former Jesuit who had lived with Father LaFarge at America Home whereas pursuing doctoral research at Columbia College.
He had an embarrassing story to inform. In August of 1963, the rector of the Jesuit group had requested him to accompany the aged LaFarge to Washington for a civil rights protest. He begged off on the grounds that he had an excessive amount of educational work to do. A number of days later, the entrance web page of The New York Instances featured a photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his well-known “I Have A Dream” speech on the March on Washington. Among the many dignitaries sharing the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with Dr. King? John LaFarge, S.J.
Writing about his expertise on the March on Washington, LaFarge known as it “as tranquil and inevitable as God’s windfall itself, with the majesty and energy of an apocalyptic imaginative and prescient.”
The erstwhile graduate pupil admitted in his word that he had spent the subsequent 46 years kicking himself for his foolishness: His research may have waited for an additional day, however as a substitute he had missed out on one of the crucial momentous events in fashionable American historical past.
LaFarge’s presence with Dr. King made a certain quantity of sense; from the Thirties by the Nineteen Sixties, he was one of many nation’s most recognizable advocates for racial justice, penning a whole bunch of articles and quite a few books on the topic, together with 1937’s Interracial Justice: A Research of the Catholic Doctrine of Race Relations. That e book impressed Pope Pius XI to ask LaFarge to assist write an encyclical on racism, “The Unity of the Human Race” (“Humani Generis Unitas”). The encyclical was by no means launched, probably as a result of the pope feared it could additional intensify the persecution of the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany.
Born in 1880 into one of many nation’s most distinguished households (his father, additionally John, was a famend artist with stained glass; two of LaFarge’s siblings, Oliver Hazard Perry LaFarge and Christopher Grant LaFarge, grew to become well-known architects, and his nephew Oliver LaFarge received the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for his novel Laughing Boy), John LaFarge graduated from Harvard in 1901 and was ordained a priest in 1905, becoming a member of the Jesuits shortly after. Although he needed to develop into a professor, he suffered from poor well being in the course of the course of his formation; in consequence, as a substitute of being despatched to graduate research, LaFarge was assigned to be an assistant pastor in numerous parishes.
LaFarge was despatched in 1911 to St. Mary’s County, Md., a rural space with a big inhabitants of African People the place the Jesuits had first established mission church buildings in 1634. (For a few years, the Jesuits of the area had themselves owned quite a few slaves.) The financial and social struggles of his African American parishioners had a strong impression on LaFarge, and dealing for racial justice would develop into his major ministry when he got here to America in 1926.
Pope Pius XI requested John LaFarge to assist write an encyclical on racism, “The Unity of the Human Race” (“Humani Generis Unitas”).
In 1934, LaFarge based the Catholic Interracial Council of New York; by 1960, there have been 42 Catholic Interracial Councils round the USA, they usually have been well-liked with political activists and faculty college students as an avenue for interracial dialogue. LaFarge was continuously sought out as a lecturer; he additionally revealed a number of extra books, together with The Race Query and the Negro (1943) and Race Relations (1956).
By the point of the March on Washington, LaFarge’s affect within the Civil Rights motion had waned, partially due to his superior age but additionally as a result of he promoted a extra gradual, average strategy to civil rights points than a lot of his friends within the motion. He died only a few months after the march on the age of 83.
Writing in America in 1963 about his expertise on the march, LaFarge known as it “as tranquil and inevitable as God’s windfall itself, with the majesty and energy of an apocalyptic imaginative and prescient. This was the one expression that occurred to my thoughts, as I gazed over the immense throng stretching all the best way from the Lincoln Memorial to the distant Washington Monument—a humbly but proudly rejoicing multitude of Negroes and whites, responding magically to audio system and singers alike.” Attendees on the march, LaFarge wrote, have been sure of two issues:
that the demonstration’s goals have been fully affordable, consistent with the nation’s oldest and finest traditions; and that these goals have been sure of success. The knowledge was born of American delight in our nation and its heritage. And the marchers have been claiming their heritage. As in historical Israel, their hope was within the God of justice and love.
The march, he concluded, “was however a starting, a summons to unceasing effort. The hour is sure to come back—and the much less delay the higher—when North and South alike will set a remaining seal upon its easy objective of jobs and freedom for all residents—sure for all.”
“The hour is sure to come back—and the much less delay the higher—when North and South alike will set a remaining seal upon its easy objective of jobs and freedom for all residents—sure for all.”
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Our poetry choice for this week is “Elegy, Written in a Soccer Area,” by Lynne Viti. Readers can view all of America’s revealed poems right here.
On this area each week, America options opinions of and literary commentary on one specific author or group of writers (each new and previous; our archives span greater than a century), in addition to poetry and different choices from America Media. We hope it will give us an opportunity to offer you extra in-depth protection of our literary choices. It additionally permits us to alert digital subscribers to a few of our on-line content material that doesn’t make it into our newsletters.
Different Catholic E-book Membership columns:
Theophilus Lewis introduced the Harlem Renaissance to the pages of America
William Lynch, the best American Jesuit you’ve most likely by no means heard of
The religious depths of Toni Morrison
Leonard Feeney, America’s solely excommunicated literary editor (to this point)
Joan Didion: A chronicler of contemporary life’s horrors and consolations
Blissful studying!
James T. Keane