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Healing the Racial Divide
A Catholic Racial Justice Framework Inspired by Dr. Arthur Falls
Lincoln Rice
Healing the Racial Divide
A Catholic Racial Justice Framework Inspired by Dr. Arthur Falls
Copyright © 2014 Lincoln Rice. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Pickwick Publications
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ISBN 13: 978-1-62564-474-9
EISBN 13: 978-1-63087-564-0
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Rice, Lincoln
Healing the racial divide : a Catholic racial justice framework inspired by Dr. Arthur Falls / Lincoln Rice.
p. ; cm. —Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 13: 978-1-62564-474-9
1. African American Catholics—History—20th century. 2. Civil rights workers—United States—Biography. 3. Church and social problems—Catholic Church. I. Title.
BX4705.F3 R49 2014
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 10/06/2014
Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
Acknowledgments
First, I would like to thank Arthur Grand Pré Falls. The passion and vigor behind his life and writings has been an inspiration for me. The decades of his life that he dedicated to racial justice were a constant source of reinvigoration in getting back to work on this project. Furthermore, Arthur’s own unique vision of the Catholic Worker movement continues to challenge my own appropriation of this movement.
Professionally, I owe my eternal gratitude to Bryan Massingale—my dissertation director. My initial interest at St. Francis Seminary had been in spirituality and scripture. His obvious enthusiasm for moral theology and its importance for twenty-first century Catholicism are in no small way responsible for my further studies in the subject. I also owe my gratitude to the rest of my dissertation board. Patrick Carey was supportive of a PhD student who came into his office wanting to write a paper on Arthur Falls, without any real sources at that moment. Daniel Maguire is a testament to the importance of conscience and the need to intelligently—and at times humorously—interact with our great Catholic tradition. Jon Nilson’s own willingness to become an apprentice to James Cone and black Catholic thought serves as an example par excellence for how white Catholic theologians should address racism. I would also like to thank Karen A. Johnson, a fellow researcher at Wheaton College, who was willing to share with me her own discoveries related to Falls.
I am also thankful to the Marquette Theology Department for its commitment to high academic quality and its generous funding of my classes. I am thankful to the family of Cyril E. Smith (1900–1969) for funding my first year of dissertating in the form of the Smith Family Fellowship, which allowed me to perform research in Chicago.
I am thankful to the many faith communities that have supported me over the years: the Casa Maria Catholic Worker, St. Michael Catholic Church, and Blessed Trinity Parish in Milwaukee; St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church and Catholic Central Grade School in Green Bay; and, of course, my parents, Curt and Cele Rice—and their parents, who passed on to them a faith that they in turned passed on to me.
Lastly, I would like to thank my wife, Laura Pope. She has always supported me on this project. No words can express my sincere gratitude for her.
Abbreviations
AAC: Archdiocese of Chicago’s Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Archives and Records Center
AGF: Arthur G. Falls, Reminiscence. Raynor Memorial Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, Marquette University
CUL: Chicago Urban League Records, Richard J. Daley Library, University of Illinois at Chicago
DDCW: Dorothy Day-Catholic Worker Collection, Raynor Memorial Library, Marquette University
WSHS: Western Springs Historical Society, Western Springs, Illinois
Introduction
The Reason for This Book
The broad context for the writing of this book is a desire to share the story of Arthur Grand Pré Falls (1901–2000) with as many people as possible. Falls, a black Catholic medical doctor, devoted his days to bettering the lives of African Americans and poor people of all races. In addition to admiring his keen mind and witty personality, I was moved by his activities and his writings to consider the plight of African Americans on a much deeper level. Falls’s dedication to living out his Catholic faith despite onerous challenges has all the indications of sainthood. It is my belief and hope that every reader of this book will come to the same conclusion.
The immediate context for the writing of this book was the discovery of a manuscript that Falls composed in 1962—a draft of his unpublished memoir. This manuscript is a new source of information about a man who has been largely absent in writings on black and Catholic American history. While doing research during spring 2009 for a doctoral seminar in American Catholic Theology with Dr. Patrick W. Carey, I learned about the edited draft (about 620 pages, typed) when I made an unsolicited phone call to Falls’s favorite niece, Vilma Childs, an octogenarian living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I then aided the head of the Raynor Library Archives at Marquette University in obtaining this draft for Raynor’s Social Action Collection. Certain pieces are missing from this source, so I also consulted a very incomplete first draft of Falls’s memoir (about 180 pages) that is part of the August Meier Papers at the New York Public Library.1 Falls’s extensive writings include articles in publications such as the New York Catholic Worker, the Chicago Catholic Worker, the St. Elizabeth Chronicle, the Interracial Review, the Chicago Defender, the Sign, and America. Moreover, numerous archives in the Chicago area aided me in confirming many of the episodes relayed by Falls in his memoir and in piecing together those parts of his life not covered in the memoir. My use of all these sources—especially the newly discovered manuscript—make this book unique as a contribution to the field of racial justice.
