For more than a century, Catholic priests in Maryland held Black people in bondage.
So after the Civil War, the emancipated Black families that had been torn apart in sales organized by the clergymen were confronted with a choice: Should they remain in the church that had betrayed them?
Over the past seven years, I’ve pieced together the harrowing origin story of the American Catholic Church, which relied on slave labor and slave sales to sustain itself and to help finance its expansion.
As I’ve considered the choices those families faced in 1864, I have found myself pondering my faith and my church and my own place in it.
It was one of the largest documented slave sales of the time, and it shattered entire families.
Persons:
Black, I’ve, Witnesses
Organizations:
American Catholic Church, Georgetown University
Locations:
Maryland, Louisiana