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TENTH IN A SERIES
On Aug. 19, 1903, Father Joseph Anciaux, a Belgian priest who a year later would join the American Josephites, sent a 44-page booklet titled “Concerning the Wretched Condition of Negro Catholics in America” to all the archbishops and bishops of the United States. In what came to be known as the “Red Book” (because of its red-colored binding), Anciaux brought to light the crushing barriers placed before African Americans in early 20th century American society. Anciaux condemned segregation practices in the Catholic Church and took to task the American hierarchy, claiming that with only a few exceptions, the bishops of the United States failed to defend the rights of African Americans for fear of a backlash from a public steeped in prejudice. Anciaux's “Red Book” prompted Mother Katharine Drexel, the Philadelphia heiress, missionary in service to the Native American and African American peoples, and future canonized saint, as well as the Apostolic Delegate to the United States, Archbishop Sebastiano Martinelli, to adapt a more focused and urgent strategy to combat racism in the Church and American society. With encouragement from the Congregation Propaganda fidei (the office of the Holy See charged with care of the missions—the United States was considered mission territory until 1908), on April 26, 1906, the Catholic Board for Mission Work Among the Colored People was established at the annual meeting of the American archbishops of the United States in Baltimore. Prominent board members included James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, Archbishop (later Cardinal) John Farley of New York, Archbishop Patrick Ryan of Philadelphia, Bishop Thomas Byrne of Nashville, Tenn., and Bishop Edward Allen of Mobile, Ala. The board's first director was Father John E. Burke, a New York priest, who had distinguished himself in his service to African Americans in New York City.
John E. Burke was born on Jan. 2, 1852 in Brooklyn to John and Katherine Burke. The senior John Burke later served as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War. The family moved to Manhattan and young John attended St. Ann’s School, St. Francis Xavier College in New York City, Mount St. Mary’s College, Emmitsburg, Md., and the American College (later North American College) in Rome. Ordained in Rome on Aug. 4, 1878, Father Burke was assigned to Epiphany Church, Manhattan, where the pastor, Father Richard Burtsell, a disciple of Father Thomas Farrell, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church, Greenwich Village, and early proponent of an African American apostolate in New York, purchased, with his own funds, the former Third Universalist Church on Bleecker Street for $40,000 and renamed it St. Benedict the Moor Church. On Nov. 18, 1883, St. Benedict the Moor was dedicated, with Father Burke as its first pastor. Although African American Catholic parishes (albeit segregated) were prevalent in such states as Louisiana and Maryland, St. Benedict the Moor was the first African American parish located north of the Mason-Dixon Line. A vibrant parish, St. Benedict the Moor attracted African American Catholics from Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey. According to Father Jack R. Arlotta, in his 1992 master’s thesis from St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, ‘“Before Harlem,’ Black Catholics in the Archdiocese of New York and the Church of St. Benedict the Moor,” St. Benedict the Moor was a “diverse parish,” whose ranks included domestic workers, laborers, and political and governmental leaders—most noted, Dr. John E.W. Thompson, the United States minister and consul general to Haiti from 1885 to 1891. Many non-African American Catholics also attended Mass at St. Benedict the Moor, making it a truly integrated worshipping community. In 1886, Father Burke opened an orphanage on Bleecker Street, St. Benedict Home, for African American children denied residence in city-run, as well as Catholic, child-care institutions. In 1891, St. Benedict Home moved to Rye and served the needs of African American orphans for the next 50 years, before closing in 1941.
In 1887, Archbishop Michael A. Corrigan appointed the newly ordained Father Thomas O’Keefe, who had served as Father Burke’s altar boy at Epiphany Church, as curate at St. Benedict the Moor. Like Burke, O’Keefe was dedicated to the African American apostolate and succeeded Father Burke as pastor in 1907 when the latter was named director of the Catholic Board for Mission Work Among the Colored People.
Beginning in 1907, Msgr. Burke directed his energies particularly toward African Americans in the South—later expanding the focus to African Americans who had moved from the South to the urban centers of the North as part of the “Great Migration” after World War I. Msgr. Burke traveled extensively through the United States, establishing nationwide collections, booklets, pulpit announcements and parish missions, heightening awareness of the plight of African Americans in the 20th century. During his 18-year tenure, 80 mission churches and 66 schools were established, many of which were funded through Mother Katharine Drexel’s vast personal wealth. Known for his kindness and generosity, Msgr. Burke inspired numerous priest pioneers in the civil rights movement, including the founder of the Catholic Interracial Council of New York, Father John LaFarge, S.J., and Msgr. Patrick O'Boyle, a New York priest who in 1948, as the first resident archbishop of Washington, D.C., desegregated Washington archdiocesan schools six years before the United States Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing racial segregation in the United States.
Msgr. Burke died on May 7, 1925. In the funeral oration at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Msgr. Burke’s friend and protege, now Msgr. O'Keefe, said:
“Back in the days of the Civil War...there was a little boy serving Mass regularly down in St. Ann’s Church. His father, an officer in the Union Army, was fighting...for the liberation of the slaves. That little boy now lies dead before us, after 40 years of fighting in the Army of the Lord for the spiritual salvation of the same race that his father helped to free from the bondage of slavery.”
One of the many priests who attended Msgr. Burke’s funeral was a young Msgr. Joseph Rummel, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church on West 125th Street in Harlem. Ten years later, Rummel would be named the ninth archbishop of New Orleans. Archbishop Rummel would go on to be one of the outstanding figures of the civil rights movement in the mid-20th century Church and nation.
