In 1875, Pope Pius IX consecrated James Augustine Healy, born a slave on a Georgia plantation, as the first African American Catholic Bishop. He served as Bishop of Portland, Maine, for the remaining twenty five years of his life. In his life and his work, Bishop Healy demonstrated the range of possibilities that were sometimes open even to African Americans who were born into slavery, and showed the ability of an African American 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 African American history. He was not a "race man" that is, his activities and achievements were not directed towards the progress of the African American community as a whole (Johnson, 1978: 128). Instead, his ministry and work were primarily directed to Irish American 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 African Americans; the "Beloved Outcaste" must surely have found in his own experience as an African American the strengths that allowed him to lead another outcaste people. Healy's enduring significance in African American history is that he showed how a person of ability could, with luck, transcend the barriers of race to play a major role in society.
James Augustine Healy was born on April 6, 1830, on a plantation in Jones County, Georgia. His father was Michael Morris Healy, an Irishman who came t...