NASHVILLE, Tenn. — As American Catholics, we rightfully celebrated the feast of St. Katharine Drexel this month. And as Dcn Harry Guess, observed recently on Nashville Catholic Radio: “A saint walked along the streets of Nashville.”
But let me suggest there is another story to celebrate this week: that of Eugene Bunn, an African-American stove repairer in Nashville. His is a story of faith and agency during Jim Crow, when Black Catholics were denied agency not only by civil society but by their Church.
After all, St. Katharine might not have walked the streets of Nashville were it not for a question Bunn put to then Bishop of Nashville, Thomas Sebastian Byrne.
“I became a communicant of St. Mary’s Church of this city at the last Confirmation,” Bunn wrote to the bishop on June 20, 1898.
“On that day I was very much struck with the awful responsibility to my children which my act in becoming a Christian had impressed upon me by a remark of yours and Father Morris’. The condition had never dawned upon me until you and he emphasized the absolute necessity of the parents rearing their offspring in the faith… My wife and the mother of my children is not Christian and my children (four in number) are under her constant care while I am away earning bread for them.”
Bunn continued:
“I told her that we must rear our children in the faith, and she remarked that she did not know the Faith. Then the condition of my absolute helplessness now dawned upon me. I had hoped to win my wife over to the Faith, but she said our children, being colored, cannot be educated in a Catholic school because there is no provision made for them… She said I cannot become a Catholic unless my children can have the opportunities given the children of other Catholic parents; if this is the only opportunity for their and my salvation I prefer to go down to torment with them… How can I escape the consequences of a failure to educate my children in my faith? If I was not poor I would send them off to a Catholic school, but my poverty renders this impossible. I am surely perplexed. Please show me what is my duty in the previous.”
It was that letter, in part, that prompted Byrne to turn to St. Katharine—a Philadelphia heiress turned nun—who was already well known for her evangelization of indigenous Americans and African Americans. The bishop invited her to Nashville as a city ripe for her work.
That letter, by a newly confirmed Black Catholic layman, helped set in motion:
- The establishment of Holy Family Catholic Church, a parish for Black Catholics, at College Street and Gay Street in downtown Nashville. It was dedicated on June 29, 1902.
- The establishment of Immaculate Mother Academy in 1904 at 7th Ave South and Drexel Street, a primary and secondary school for Black children. (Holy Family Catholic Church would be relocated there in 1920, and the primary school would be re-named Holy Family.)
- St. Vincent de Paul Church and School in 1932 in North Nashville, near Fisk University and Meharry Medical College, two of the preeminent Black higher education institutions in the United States.
In each of these ventures, St. Katharine provided the funding, and the order she founded—the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament—staffed Immaculate Mother until it closed in 1954.
Bishop Byrne’s response to Bunn’s original plea in 1898 is also worth noting:
“I am just in receipt of your letter… which was forwarded to me… and when I return to Nashville, I shall enquire into your case, and see what provision can be made for your children’s education in the Catholic faith,” he wrote.
"Be assured… that I very deeply sympathize with you in your difficulties, and I shall leave no stone unturned to find a means by which your children shall receive a Christian education despite their nativity. The Catholic Church makes no distinction among her children, but, as you know, social distinctions exist in the South, which the Church cannot at once remove. These social distinctions are so strong that even Catholics are influenced by them, but this is not the intention nor is it the disposition of the Church.”
In light of all this, Bunn’s story is truly worth celebrating along with that of St. Katharine, as he, too, walked along the streets of Nashville.
Jim O’Hara is a member of Christ the King Parish in Nashville and of the Thea Bowman Ministry, a joint ministry of Christ the King and St. Vincent de Paul.
