When America was celebrating its centennial 12 months in 2009, Jim McDermott and I wrote a series of articles on notable figures within the magazine’s history, including one on John LaFarge, S.J., a longtime editor (including a four-year stint as editor in chief from 1944 to 1948). Soon after the article’s publication, I received a note from a former Jesuit who had lived with Father LaFarge at America House while pursuing doctoral studies at Columbia University.
He had an embarrassing story to inform. In August of 1963, the rector of the Jesuit community had asked him to accompany the elderly LaFarge to Washington for a civil rights protest. He begged off on the grounds that he had an excessive amount of academic work to do. A number of days later, the front page of The Latest York Times featured a photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his famous “I Have A Dream” speech on the March on Washington. Among the many dignitaries sharing the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with Dr. King? John LaFarge, S.J.
Writing about his experience on the March on Washington, LaFarge called it “as tranquil and inevitable as God’s windfall itself, with the majesty and power of an apocalyptic vision.”
The erstwhile graduate student admitted in his note that he had spent the following 46 years kicking himself for his foolishness: His studies could have waited for an additional day, but as a substitute he had missed out on one of the momentous occasions in modern American history.
LaFarge’s presence with Dr. King made a certain quantity of sense; from the Thirties through the Sixties, he was one among the nation’s most recognizable advocates for racial justice, penning a whole bunch of articles and diverse books on the topic, including 1937’s Interracial Justice: A Study of the Catholic Doctrine of Race Relations. That book inspired Pope Pius XI to ask LaFarge to assist write an encyclical on racism, “The Unity of the Human Race” (“Humani Generis Unitas”). The encyclical was never released, likely since the pope feared it will further intensify the persecution of the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany.
Born in 1880 into one among the nation’s most distinguished families (his father, also John, was a renowned artist with stained glass; two of LaFarge’s siblings, Oliver Hazard Perry LaFarge and Christopher Grant LaFarge, became famous architects, and his nephew Oliver LaFarge won the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for his novel Laughing Boy), John LaFarge graduated from Harvard in 1901 and was ordained a priest in 1905, joining the Jesuits shortly after. Though he desired to change into a professor, he suffered from poor health through the course of his formation; consequently, as a substitute of being sent to graduate studies, LaFarge was assigned to be an assistant pastor in various parishes.
LaFarge was sent in 1911 to St. Mary’s County, Md., a rural area with a big population of African Americans where the Jesuits had first established mission churches in 1634. (For a few years, the Jesuits of the region had themselves owned a lot of slaves.) The economic and social struggles of his African American parishioners had a robust impact on LaFarge, and dealing for racial justice would change into his primary ministry when he got here to America in 1926.
Pope Pius XI asked John LaFarge to assist write an encyclical on racism, “The Unity of the Human Race” (“Humani Generis Unitas”).
In 1934, LaFarge founded the Catholic Interracial Council of Latest York; by 1960, there have been 42 Catholic Interracial Councils around the US, they usually were popular with political activists and college students as an avenue for interracial dialogue. LaFarge was steadily sought out as a lecturer; he also published several more books, including The Race Query and the Negro (1943) and Race Relations (1956).
By the point of the March on Washington, LaFarge’s influence within the Civil Rights movement had waned, partly due to his advanced age but in addition because he promoted a more gradual, moderate approach to civil rights issues than lots of his peers within the movement. He died just just a few months after the march on the age of 83.
Writing in America in 1963 about his experience on the march, LaFarge called it “as tranquil and inevitable as God’s windfall itself, with the majesty and power of an apocalyptic vision. This was the one expression that occurred to my mind, as I gazed over the immense throng stretching all the best way from the Lincoln Memorial to the distant Washington Monument—a humbly yet proudly rejoicing multitude of Negroes and whites, responding magically to speakers and singers alike.” Attendees on the march, LaFarge wrote, were certain of two things:
that the demonstration’s goals were completely reasonable, consistent with the nation’s oldest and best traditions; and that these goals were certain of success. The understanding was born of American pride in our country and its heritage. And the marchers were claiming their heritage. As in ancient Israel, their hope was within the God of justice and love.
The march, he concluded, “was but a starting, a summons to unceasing effort. The hour is certain to come back—and the less delay the higher—when North and South alike will set a final seal upon its easy goal of jobs and freedom for all residents—yes for all.”
“The hour is certain to come back—and the less delay the higher—when North and South alike will set a final seal upon its easy goal of jobs and freedom for all residents—yes for all.”
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Our poetry selection for this week is “Elegy, Written in a Soccer Field,” by Lynne Viti. Readers can view all of America’s published poems here.
On this space every week, America features reviews of and literary commentary on one particular author or group of writers (each recent and old; our archives span greater than a century), in addition to poetry and other offerings from America Media. We hope this may give us a likelihood to offer you more in-depth coverage of our literary offerings. It also allows us to alert digital subscribers to a few of our online content that doesn’t make it into our newsletters.
Other Catholic Book Club columns:
Theophilus Lewis brought the Harlem Renaissance to the pages of America
William Lynch, the best American Jesuit you’ve probably never heard of
The spiritual depths of Toni Morrison
Leonard Feeney, America’s only excommunicated literary editor (thus far)
Joan Didion: A chronicler of recent life’s horrors and consolations
Glad reading!
James T. Keane
