Healing the Racial Divide. Lincoln Rice

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Healing the Racial Divide - Lincoln Rice


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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.

      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.

      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.


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