Catholic Bishop James Augustine Healy

In 1875, Pope Pius IX consecrated James Augustine Healy, born a slave on a Georgia plantation, as the first AfricanAmerican Catholic Bishop. He served as Bishop of Portland, Maine, for the remaining twentyfive years of his life. In his life and his work, Bishop Healy demonstrated the range of possibilities that were sometimes open even to AfricanAmericans who were born into slavery, and showed the ability of an AfricanAmerican man of strong character to exercise the authority of the Catholic Church over largely white congregations and to function on a level of equality with his brethren in the episcopate, even in an age of intense social prejudice and legal discrimination. His life also illustrated the challenges faced by the "marginal man" of mixed racial background, uncertain of his membership in either racial community (Foley, 1969: Introduction).

In spite of his achievements and high office in the Catholic Church, Bishop Healy is not a prominent figure in most accounts of AfricanAmerican history. He was not a "race man" that is, his activities and achievements were not directed towards the progress of the AfricanAmerican community as a whole (Johnson, 1978: 128). Instead, his ministry and work were primarily directed to IrishAmerican Catholics. In the late nineteenth century, however, this was a community which was nearly as feared and hated by large segments of white Protestant society as were AfricanAmericans; the "Beloved Outcaste" must su

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the "rights" of slaveowners were sharply infringed upon. Owners could not free their own slaves; manumission could be done only by an Act of the state legislature, and a fine of a thousand dollars per attempted manumission was applied against the estate of any slaveowner who attempted to free his slaves in his will (Foley, 1969: 13). Eliza and her ten children were legally Michael Healy's slaves, but he (unlike many plantation owners) regarded them as his wife and his children, and he resolved that they should be free. He freed his son in the only way left available, by taking to the free state of New York, where he enrolled him in a Quaker school in Flushing, Long Island, in 1837 (Logan and Winston, 1982: 302). However, young James Augustine's experience at the Quaker school was not a positive one (Foley, 1969: 1718). The Quakers were proud of their role in the abolitionist movement, but as with "civil rights" whites of a later age, pride was often a stronger emotion than brotherhood. In 1844, James Augustine and his brothers were transferred to College of the Holy Cross, a school run by the Jesuit Order in Worcester, Massachusetts. James Augustine entered the secondarycollege program; his younger brothers en

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