RACE
629
RACE
docile, cheerful, and emotional disposition is much in-
fluenced by his immediate environment, whether
those surroundings be good or evil. Catholic faith
and discipline are known to have a wholesome effect
on the race. Obser\Tng men and judges of courts have
remarked on the law-abiding spirit existing in Catholic
coloured communities. Some elements of the white
man's civilization do not always tend to elevate the
morality of the negro. The negro is naturally gre-
garious, and the dissipations and conditions of city
life in many instances corrupt the native simplicity of
the younger generation to the sorrow of their more con-
servative elders. (For a view of religion in these later
times among the blacks in the native African home
of the race, see Africa.) Contrary to a prevalent
opinion, the negro, when well grounded in the Catho-
lic faith, is tenacious of it.
In the United States the negroes and their descend- ants naturally adopted more or less the religion of their masters or former owners. Thus it comes that, outside of Maryland and the Gulf Coast, in a large section of the South comprising former slave states and colonized by English Protestants, the negroes who claim affiliation to any Church are for the most part Baptists and Methodists. Catholics and the Catholic faith were entirely unknown to the negroes in those states. In colonial times the religion of Catholics and the religion of negroes were regarded with equal disfavour, the latter being considered non- Christian. Under the law of Virginia as it was in 1705, Catholics, Indians, and negro slaves were denied the right to appear "as witnesses in any case whatso- ever, not being Christians". The negro Methodists comprise those who are in a manner affiliated to the white Methodists, as also those who form independent bodies having no connexion with the white bodies. The three more important organizations of coloured Methodists are the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist EpiscOTial Zion Church, and the Coloured Methodist Episcopal Church. These bodies claim together 869,710 members. With other Mrican Methodists the total number of coloured Methodists is probably nearly 1,500,000, with 1.3,000 churches. The greater number of coloured Protestants are Baptists. After the manner of the Baptist sect, the Baptist congregations are independent of each other. However, according to statistics given for 1908, there are eighty-nine state organizations and six hundred district associations with 18,.307 organized negro Baptist churches and 17,088 ordained preachers in the United States. The entire number of coloured Baptists is given as 2,330,535. The number of negroes adhering to other Protestant sects is comparatively insignificant. Taken together there are probably about 4,000,000 negroes who profess Protestantism in the United States. There are probably about 200,000 coloured Catholics, which leaves over 5,000,- 000 who profess no Christianity. Remembering that some of the Baptist sects do not baptize young children, we may conclude that there are over 6,000,- 000 negroes in the United States unbaptized. On the other hand, the vast majority of those who claim ad- herence to some Protestant denomination have no definite notions of Christian doctrine and have equally vague ideas about Christian morality. This state of things may be largely attributed to the lack of definite religious training in youth. The negroes of the West India Islands and of South America have for the most part the religion of the original conquer- ors and settlers of those regions, and the matter is treated under the respective proper titles.
As before stated, the Catholic negroes of the United States live chiefly in those Southern states originally settled in part by Catholics. Among these are Mary- land and the states on the Gulf of Mexico, namely, Florida, Mississippi, and especially Louisiana, where the larger number dwell. The bishops of the Catholic
Church, in times past, made zealous endeavours to
spread the elevating influence of the Catholic Faith
among the coloured peo])le of this country. The two
later councils of Baltimore, in burning words, urge
work among the coloured race. The Second Plenary
Council implores priests "as far as they can to con-
secrate theii- thoughts, their time and themselves,
wholly and entirely, if possible, to the service of the
coloured people". The want of men and means has
much hampered the work. At one time it was re-
ported that many thousands had lost the Faith for
want of priests to care for them. It is said that in one
portion of Louisiana alone as many as 30,000 strayed
away. But strenuous efforts are now being made to
reclaim them. The supply of priests devoted to the
interests and salvation of the negro race is recognized
as a serious problem, as there seems to be hardly a
sufficient number of vocations among white youth.
Some time before his death. Pope Leo XIII issued a
letter urging a native clergy. Pope Pius X has also
encouraged missionary work among the negroes.
It is almost impossible to obtain the exact number of Catholic negroes in the United States. While a great number live in colomed parishes and have their own churches, to the number of about sixty, many others are mingled among whites in widely separate parishes, where no report is ever made of the colour of the members. However, a conserv- ative estimate gives 225,000 as the approximate num- ber in the Continental United States. There are about ninety-five priests labouring exclusively among coloured people. Of these the Fathers of the Society of St. Joseph, about fifty in number, labour in twelve Southern dioceses and have their mother-house at Baltimore, Maryland. The remainder are twenty- eight diocesan priests in various dioceses and priests of the Society of African Missions, in the Diocese of Savannah; of the Society of the Divine Word, in the Dioceses of Natchez and Little Rock; of the Congre- gation of the Holy Ghost, in Pennsylvania and Vir- ginia. There are five priests in the country who are coloured men. Some white sisterhoods are as- sisting the good work for the race, teaching 11,000 children in the parish and mission schools. Besides these, there are two communities of coloured sisters. One of these is the Oblate Sisters of Providence. The Sisters of the Holy Family, another order of coloured women, now has 116 sisters, who have charge of seventeen schools and asylums situated in the Archdiocese of New Orleans and in the Dioceses of Galveston and Little Rock. They also conduct a Government school with 295 pupils in British Hon- duras.
A commission established by the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore for the Cathohc missions among the coloured people and Indians, consisting of three archbishops, distributes the funds collected for this purpose annually throughout the United States; and a special "Catholic Board for Mission Work among the Coloured People", incorporated by the hierarchy in 1907, fosters a missionary spirit among Catholics in favour of the coloured people and labours also to provide funds for this object. (See Priests, Con- fraternities of: VI. The United States.)
DowD, The Negro Races (New York, 1907); Johnston, The Negro in the New World (New York, 1910); Clark, Cardinal Lavigerie and the African Slave Trade (London, 1889) ; Bltden, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (London. 1888); Clark- son, On the Slave Trade (2 vols.. London, 1808); Negroes in the Untied States, census reports (Government Printing Office, Wash- ington, 1904); Schools for the Colored Race (United States Bureau of Education, Washington, 1911); Jackson and Davis, The Industrial History of the Negro Race (Richmond. 1908) ; Bruce, The Plantation Negro as a Freeman (New York. 1889); Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (3 vols., Boston, 1874); Williams, Hist, of the Negro Race (2 vols.. New York. 1883); TucKERMAN, William Jay and the Abolition of Slavery (Nev/York, 1893); Washington, Story of the Negro (2 vols.. New York, 1909); Idem, The Future of the American Negro (Boston, 1899); Idem. The Negro in Business (Boston. 1907); Odum, Social and Mental Traits of the Negro (New York, 1910) ; Ddbham, .Star of
