Falls at his office desk. Chicago Illinois: 1941. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USF34-038696-D.
Falls is best known for founding the first Catholic Worker in Chicago in 1936 and working tirelessly on racial justice issues within the Catholic Church and the Chicago area from the late 1920s through the 1960s. Historical references to Falls are often limited to a few sentences; even Cyprian Davis’s The History of Black Catholics in the United States, which is the first and only work dealing with the entire history of black Catholics in America, does not mention Falls.
The newly discovered manuscript documents Falls’s family background and his life until the mid-1940s. It chronicles the activities of a man who dedicated almost every spare minute of his adult life to improving the situation of African Americans in the Chicago area. To list some (but not all) of the organizations and groups that Falls was involved with: the Catholic Worker movement, the Chicago Urban League, the Federated Colored Catholics (later the National Catholic Federation for the Promotion of Better Race Relations), the American League Against War and Fascism, the Chicago Catholic Worker Credit Union, the Cooperative Wholesale and Consumer Cooperative Services, the People’s Consumer Cooperative, the Chicago Catholic Interracial Council, the Citizens Committee for Adequate Medical Care, the Ogden Park Citizens Committee, the Cook County Physicians Association, the National Medical Association, the Illinois State Commission on the Urban Colored Population, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Chicago chapter of the Post War World Council, and St. John of the Cross Catholic Church in Western Springs, Illinois.
The doctrine of the mystical body of Christ permeates Falls’s life and writings, both implicitly and explicitly. Falls viewed racism as rooted in a heretical understanding of Christianity that was foreign to Christianity’s true nature. Falls dedicated his life to fighting this evil with the same tenacity that early Christian saints dedicated themselves to fighting their contemporary heresies. His vision for Catholic racial justice brought together both theory and active struggle, and it is this vision that is needed as a corrective and inspiration for contemporary Catholic thought on racial justice. His emphasis on struggle could help bridge the divide that often exists in theology between esoteric thought and action. This combination of thought and action echoes liberation theology’s notion of “practical mediation” or theological praxis.2
Despite the work of Falls and countless others like him, racial injustice continues to pervade American society: being black means that one will experience “racial prejudice, discrimination, rejection, and hostility” and being white means that one will experience “the presumption of dominance and entitlement . . . [and being] the measure of normativity.”3 For those who think that racism ceased to be a problem when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, Bryan N. Massingale gives countless examples of racist acts that occurred within the first two hundred days of Obama taking office, including the “resurgence of race-based hate groups and militia movements.” Obama also received more death threats than any previous presidential candidate, president-elect, or president.4 Bishop Dale Melczek of Gary, Indiana, points out that the “very existence of segregated communities is a sad testimony to the fact that people of faith have not translated religious values into action.”5 More recently, there was national outrage and tension over the murder of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed seventeen-year-old African American. He was shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer who stated that he killed Trayvon in self-defense. The twenty-eight-year-old volunteer had followed Trayvon because he believed the teenager looked suspicious and a number of break-ins had recently occurred in the community. The volunteer was later found innocent of any wrongdoing.6 These examples point not only to blatant explosions of racial tension in the United States, but also to a more subtle racism below the surface that can be more difficult to discern since it is not as blatant as the Jim Crow system that preceded it.
For over the last hundred years, Catholic ethical thought in the area of racism—when it has been addressed—has consisted almost exclusively of white clergy writing and speaking about how whites should be more civil in their personal interactions with blacks. In other words, the remedies put forth can be distilled almost solely to moral suasion, or trying to convince whites to behave better toward other races. No one saw a need to make use of African American sources or to advocate for any active agency, or role, on the part of blacks. Over the past twenty years, a shift has begun among Catholic ethicists who engage with the topic of racism, toward employing African American sources and promoting black agency (i.e., a role for African Americans to play in furthering their liberation), but there is essentially a great inadequacy in Catholic ethical reflection regarding racism.
This inadequacy also extends to official Catholic reflection as found in documents from the Vatican and from U.S. bishops. As with most Catholic scholarly reflection over the past one hundred years, none of the statements make any serious use of black or black Catholic sources. This omission of African American resources is a damning indictment of Catholic leaders: it betrays a worldview in which white European reflection is sufficient for all times and places.
A rethinking of racial justice requires more attentive engagement with black Catholic thought. Falls represents a shift from Catholic ethical thought on racial justice by seamlessly connecting traditional dogmas and doctrines with the everyday experiences of African Americans. Although his writings did not always indicate the role of black agency, his very active pursuit of racial justice speaks volumes. This book’s ethical framework, which is grounded in the life and thought of Falls, is part of the necessary retrieval of black voices—particularly black Catholic voices. Scholarship in the area of black Catholic history is only beginning to realize the richness of the all but forgotten history of black Catholics in the United States. In studying the newly discovered manuscript and Falls’s other forgotten writings, there is an opportunity to retrieve an important voice that was almost lost.
Historical Retrieval and Liberation Theology7
The central thesis guiding this work is that the retrieval of Dr. Arthur G. Falls as a new source of information will bring a fuller and deeper understanding to current notions of Catholic racial justice. This renewed understanding will view racism not only as sinful, but rooted in a heretical understanding of Christianity—specifically a denial of the mystical body of Christ. Such a view will provide new types of practices for combating racism.
First and foremost, this central thesis will be fulfilled vis-à-vis the newly discovered manuscript of Falls’s memoir, in tandem with the draft archived at the New York Public Library. Together, these eight-hundred-plus pages are a rich and abundant resource on Falls’s activities and his inner motivations. Since Falls has been largely forgotten, this project is the first to use his life and writings to inform a theological racial justice framework.
Two theoretical methodologies inform my approach and perspective: (1) critical historical retrieval and (2) liberation theology’s “practical mediation” or theological praxis. Historical retrieval allows for the recovery of important sources and figures that have been omitted, ignored, or silenced. Theologian Stacey Floyd-Thomas employs a similar method with her womanist ethical methodology. Floyd-Thomas believes that it is essential in ethics to examine the lives of oppressed black women so that one can understand how they “survived and subverted” the advances of racism and sexism. She points to the stories of Harriet Jacobs and Sojourner Truth as examples of black women with the “ability to maintain—or even attain—a sense of dignity and self-worth that is in contradistinction to her social station.”8 In surveying the slave narratives of black women, Floyd-Thomas posits that “the moral system(s) of these enslaved black women
