School site echoes vibrant past

Does this building still stand? This is
 a 2011 image of St. Benedict the Moor
School. (Credit: Google Street View)

Second of two parts

Six years is a long time in our age of instant communications. The turn-of-the-20th-century building at the core of today's post might not exist anymore. I can't find photos of St. Benedict the Moor School newer than a 2011 Google Street View, pictured first in this post. That's an ominous sign, for the school's history is rich. The physical remainder, as you can see, is in dire shape.

Built in 1898, St. Benedict school was "one of the first all-black Catholic schools in Florida," according to a 2014 article in the St. Augustine Record. The St. Benedict parish in St. Augustine's Lincolnville neighborhood was founded in the 1870s, during Reconstruction. St. Benedict's Church was built in the early 1900s. It's been restored and appears vibrant again. 

A few web resources linked in this post document the church and school history. As always, for me, the social history leaps out. Such as the time three Catholic nuns were arrested in 1916 because they were white women teaching black schoolchildren. Jim Crow laws forbade such interaction during segregation years in Florida (and probably in other states).

As a Catholic-owned educational institution, St. Benedict's was a private school. A judge ruled the law didn't apply to private schools, and the nuns were released. Their names deserve mention, though: Sisters Mary Thomasine, Scholastica and Beningus, according to the St. Augustine Record article. That news story also notes the arrests occurred on an Easter Sunday.

St. Benedict's students ride in a school float decorated
for an Emancipation Day parade in the 1920s.
(Credit: State Archives of Florida/Twine)

The information about the nuns is listed in various websites and on a historical marker erected on the grounds of the church complex. Photos of the marker are below.

Lesser known are the photos by African-American Richard Twine, a photographer who's the subject of Part One of this post. He photographed St. Benedict class pictures, church gatherings and even the school's float in an Emancipation  Day parade in the 1920s. The images bring to life the human side of one of the decades when St. Benedict School thrived. The Twine collection may be viewed on the Florida Memory website.

The school closed in the 1960s, some 70 years after it was built with money from philanthropist and Catholic nun St. Katharine Drexel. Restoration efforts started, but stalled. In 2004, the school was considered one of St. Augustine's most threatened historic places. I wonder if restoration remains a goal. I sure hope so.

Credit: These closeup views of the
Black Catholic Heritage historical marker
 are from a gallery on waymarking.com

Fr. Bresnahan, Part II

Detail of the Feb. 20, 1908 edition that included an article
about a card received from Fr. Bresnahan

Back in March, I wrote about Father Patrick J. Bresnahan's memoir, which recounts his travels through Catholic mission territory in early 1900s Florida. Just yesterday, I stumbled across two other mentions of Fr. Bresnahan's efforts. They were articles in two newspapers in Madison, a North Florida town cited in the priest's memoir as having more than its share of bigotry and prejudice against Catholics.

The first was in the Feb. 20, 1908 New Enterprise and concerned a card the newspaper received from Fr. Bresnahan. Being a former print journalist, I know that story placement in a newspaper isn't random. So I noticed the editors put the article about Fr. Bresnahan directly below a story that described how "an unknown negro was shot to death by a posse who were chasing him" because he was a habitual thief.

Fr. Bresnahan's article seems to chastise unknown harassers for disliking how people of color were allowed to worship in the Catholic church along with whites. This was during segregation, and I assume the two races sat in separate parts of the church. In keeping with the times, the priest used the word negro in his card.

To the newspaper's credit, it allowed Fr. Bresnahan's voice to be heard. The story appears to recount the priest's card verbatim. He wrote "for the benefit of the individual who penned the anonymous threat found at the door of the Catholic church last week ..."

The unnamed threat wasn't explained, and wasn't carried out. However, Fr. Bresnahan wanted the individual responsible to know that a Catholic priest "is not the hired minion of any social aggregation."  Likewise, a Catholic church was "not a social club meeting house but a temple of God." Everyone was welcome to hear the word of God and have the mysteries of God dispensed to them. "Every human soul has a right to these blessings, no matter what color its habitation may be." You rock, Fr. Bresnahan.

He goes on to write that he wasn't a politician, that all money he received in Madison went toward the local Catholic presence, and that he wasn't trying to make a white man colored or a colored man white. He bore his anonymous "friend" no malice "as life is too short for such nonsense." But he also noted that his mission was to appeal to man's higher nature, and that if the unnamed individual ever visited the Catholic church, he shouldn't be surprised "to see a place reserved for the colored people."

Townsfolk overall seem to have been receptive. Nine months later, Fr Bresnahan's missionary services were drawing crowds, as the Enterprise-Recorder reported Nov. 5, 1908. The beautiful music was cited as one reason. But, overall, the "people of Madison are beginning to know for themselves what the Catholic church really is, and the prejudice is therefore disappearing." It was predicted that by the end of services, everyone would understand that there was "one Truth, one Faith, one Baptism...," that Christ wasn't divided.

It's hard to say how deeply inroads were made. Fr. Bresnahan was preaching in the heart of Bible Belt Protestantism. I admire the priest's initiatives, and think we might consider emulating some of the talks he lined up for the week:

• Thursday, church rules and Confession; 
• Friday, the rosary and praying for the dead; 
• Saturday, devotion to the Blessed Virgin; 
• Sunday morning, necessity of charity; 
• Sunday afternoon, the threatening evil of socialism;  
• Sunday night, the secret of Catholic success. 

Sounds almost modern. It's also a refreshing reminder of the ever-present continuity of our ancient faith.