In the Shadow of Ebenezer

In In the Shadow of Ebenezer: A Black Catholic Parish in the Age of Civil Rights and Vatican II, Leah Mickens discusses how the Civil Rights Movement and Second Vatican Council influenced Atlanta, Georgia’s Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, which served as the “mother-church” for the city’s Black Catholics (5-6). Mickens argues that the Civil Rights Movement and Vatican II, combined with Our Lady of Lourdes’ intimate connections with their Black Protestant neighbors, allowed for Our Lady of Lourdes’ Black Catholics to create their own distinct form of Catholicism by the 1970s. Our Lady of Lourdes would possess an inculturated reformed Catholic liturgy and culture, borrowing from their Black Protestant neighbors, replete with Africana-inspirations and Gospel music.  Our Lady of Lourdes’ parishioners and clergy worked together to create an authentically Black Catholic mode of worship that differed from their White Catholic coreligionists (17-18, 134-168). Mickens employs both macrohistorical and microhistorical approaches (6-7), and overall seeks to show how Our Lady of Lourdes reveals the importance of local context in Catholicism's history. In her words: “the history of Our Lady of Lourdes is part of a larger story, not just about the intersection of race and Catholicism in the South, but also about how the Church’s purportedly universal pronouncements are interpreted at the local level” (168). 

Over six chapters, Mickens utilizes diverse primary sources to analyze broader historical trends in the South, Atlanta, and the American Catholic Church throughout the 20^th century, while discussing specific people and events pertinent to  Our Lady of Lourdes’ own history (6-18). The author’s archival sources include annals and letters from the Archives of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (SBS), the religious order that ran  Our Lady of Lourdes’ school. The archive houses the most important material to develop the church’s history before 1974 (14-15). Mickens employs SBS’s archives effectively in chapter 3, using them to show  Our Lady of Lourdes’ parishioners’ reception of desegregation (72-77). Other archival primary sources include correspondences, bulletins, publications, encyclicals, and photographs. She skillfully uses all these sources to illuminate the overarching developments that shaped Our Lady of Lourdes, particularly in chapters 2 and 4 (15, 35-59, 88-111). Mickens’ research is also enhanced by the use of oral histories, which allows her to elucidate  Our Lady of Lourdes’ history during the Civil Rights Movement and Vatican II as it was experienced by the people who lived through it (15-16). The interview Mickens conducts with Andrew Hill about the closure of Drexel Catholic High School gives Mickens insight into Our Lady of Lourdes’ parishioners' reception to the shuttering of the school (80). 

In the Shadow of Ebenezer is a compelling study in an emerging field. Scholarship in Black Catholic studies remains sparse, but new awards—such as the Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., Prize from the University of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center, which recognized this book as its inaugural winner—suggests a growing academic interest in Black Catholic scholarship (170). Mickens, nonetheless, pulls from important recent works in Black Catholic studies to aid in her argument to build the limited field, especially Mark Newman’s Desegregating Dixie: The Catholic Church in the South and Desegregation, 1945-1992 (University Press of Mississippi, 2018). For her part, Mickens builds on the limited previous scholarship in this field, and the publication of this foundational text expands our knowledge of Black Catholicism (12-14). She furthermore presents topics for future research, such as the differing interpretations of Vatican II among Black Catholics and segregation's role in creating sacred places for Black Catholics, including  Our Lady of Lourdes’ attendees. (163-168).

This volume is an in-depth, microhistory of one specific Black Catholic parish that discusses broader historical trends in order to contextualize this parish’s history. Overall, Mickens’ greatest historiographical contribution is to challenge John McGreevy’s famous account of White Catholic neighborhood churches in Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North (University of Chicago Press, 1996), which attempts to universalize the American Catholic experience from microhistorical case studies. For Mickens, such attempts to universalize flatten local context. One must recognize Southern Black Catholic history as fundamentally unique, and in any case as distinct from Northern White Catholicism (7-14, 166-168). 

Chapter 6, where Mickens’ discusses the development and implementation of  Our Lady of Lourdes’ inculturated liturgy following the Civil Rights Movement and Second Vatican Council, engenders further thought. Mickens has a rather short discussion of the creation of the Zaire Rite in response to the desire of Congolese Catholics to have their own liturgy (150-151). Were Black American Catholics aware of the Zaire Rite? And if so, did Black American Catholics push to have their own rite like the Zaire Rite? Additionally, how unique was  Our Lady of Lourdes’ inculturated liturgy in Atlanta and the South? While Mickens’ main focus is on  Our Lady of Lourdes’, her pervasive discussions throughout the book on the broader city, region, and religion makes her lack of engagement with any other church’s liturgy surprising. Nevertheless, Mickens does such an excellent and thorough job telling the story of Our Lady of Lourdes’ that the reader is ultimately left with very few questions.  

In the Shadow of Ebenezer is an important and elegant book. It adds much to an understudied field, and Mickens’ discussion of Our Lady of Lourdes and the overarching historical movements affecting it are ingeniously woven, concretely illustrating the church’s history and development. The book will serve as the primer for future Black Catholic parish monographs. A timely and outstanding addition to Black Catholic studies, I recommend this book to any historian interested in Black Catholicism, the 20^th-century American South, and the ways in which events such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Second Vatican Council impacted American Catholicism. 

Philip Chivily is an graduate student in religion at Florida State University.

Philip Chivily

Date Of Review:

January 20, 2024