Rummel, Joseph Francis 1876-1964

ARCHBISHOP OF NEW ORLEANS

Role in Integration.

Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel was one of the most forthright white supporters of integration in the American Christian churches. His efforts to accomplish integration in the Catholic schools in his New Orleans archdioscese made him a much-admired and much-hated figure.

Knowledge of Racial Tension.

Rummel served as archbishop of New Orleans, the largest archdiocese in the South from 1935 to 1964. He served as pastor of a parish in Harlem in New York City from 1924 to 1928. The neighborhood was still predominantly white, but it had begun to experience the influx of black residents that soon made it the leading black urban area in the nation. The experience made Rummel sensitive to the issues of race and prejudice. In New Orleans one-fifth of the nearly 550,000 members of his archdiocese were black. The Roman Catholic church ran the largest school district in the...

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