America’s First African American Priest
At night the great Mississippi River looked deeper than ever as a woman rowed across it with her three small children. The Civil War had just begun. The woman and her children were slaves. They had fled Missouri and were crossing over into Illinois, and to freedom. That night, the woman evaded her pursuers. When she landed on the left bank, she and her children fell to their knees and prayed: ‘Now, you are free; never forget the goodness of the Lord.’ And, with that, one of her children, Augustine Tolton, later to become the first African American to be ordained priest, was ‘freed’.
Augustine Tolton was born April 1, 1854 on a plantation near Rensselaer, Missouri, about 10-miles west of Hannibal, Missouri, made famous by American author Mark Twain. Missouri was, at that time, a slave state, and Illinois, across the river, was a free state. His parents were slaves, so he, too, was born a slave. His parents were Catholics, so he, too, was baptized into his parents’ Catholic faith. His father, Peter, was an honest and good man, well-liked by his slave owner for whom he worked hard.
Seven years after Augustine was born, the American Civil War broke out. Peter talked to his wife, Martha, of his desire to escape and enlist in the Union army. As he did so, he gazed at their three children sleeping and began to talk of his hopes for their future, one in which they would be free. Martha readily agreed that her husband must go, and that someday they all would be together again, and free. They embraced. With one last look at his children, Peter headed out into the night, to the North, and to war. The couple were never to see each other again; the children were never again to play with their father. He lies in an unmarked grave somewhere near the scene of an unknown battle, having fought and died that his children would one day be free.
Racial prejudice was not confined to the South. When, finally, the Tolton family arrived in the Illinois town of Quincy, they were to live in a segregated neighborhood. Mrs. Tolton soon found work and, thereafter, supported her children as best she could. Before anything else, however, they found the nearest Catholic Church, St. Peter’s, and the family started to worship there. But racial prejudice was found there, too. Northern congregations resented the recent influx of blacks from the “South”, even if the “South” was just on the other side of the river.
Gus grew up an idealist. He loved his Catholic faith. The Tolton family remained regular worshippers at St. Peter’s. Gus participated as much as he could in parish activities: learning to serve Holy Mass and then going on to be a lay catechist. One day his parish priest, Fr. McGirr, saw Gus praying alone in church. That was not an unusual sight; however, that day was different. As he looked at the face of the young man, he noticed something. Later he asked Gus what he had been praying about. Gus told him he was praying about becoming a priest.
Fr. McGirr supported his pursuing a vocation. The formality of applying to a seminary, however, proved more complicated for the young, recently freed slave, especially as there had never been a man of his race at any seminary in America. In reply to his letters, excuses were made as to why he could not be accommodated. Religious orders were also tried, but to no avail.
Gus refused to be discouraged or to blame anyone. He knew the human heart was weak; he knew, too, that the Church was made up of sinners with human frailty never far away. He continued to pray, to give classes to his fellow parishioners, to wait, and to hope.
He never was to study at a seminary in the United States. After many years he was eventually accepted at the Pontifical University in Rome. On February 21, 1880, Gus left America bound for Europe, hoping to be a missionary in Africa. He loved his time in the Eternal City. His fellow students loved him too, and his professors held him in high regard. For the first time in his life, he lived in an environment free from racial discrimination. He thrived. He was an apt scholar. Having picked up German in Quincy, he was to leave Europe with French and Italian mastered, to say nothing of Latin. During these relatively carefree years, the only question was where he would be posted. In the end, to his surprise, he was sent back to from where he had come.
In July 1886, Fr. Tolton’s homecoming caused a stir. At Quincy station there was a large and noisy crowd to welcome him. Both black and white, Catholic and non-Catholic came to see the young man who had left and who now returned in a black soutane with a red sash. That day, however, there was one who stood apart from the crowd and quietly watched with tears in her eyes as her son returned to her a priest. He was always conscious that his vocation was as a result of his mother’s example and the Christian home she had provided for him, in spite of everything. In hindsight, however, looking at that day’s generous welcome from all quarters, it was bittersweet. Despite his open and generous manner, his learning and piety, his hard work and dedication, and above all his priestly heart and its desire for souls, he was soon to be defamed, insulted, and ultimately rejected by the people of Quincy, because he was black.
Just over three years after his triumphal return, Fr. Augustine Tolton was alone on a night train in a segregated carriage heading to Chicago where he had been assigned to care for that city’s growing black population.
Trusting all to God, the same fervor and energy that Fr. Tolton had brought to Quincy was now loosed upon a poor district of Chicago’s south side. With his bishop’s approval, the young priest set about raising funds for a church. St. Monica Church was dedicated to the service of the city’s black population. His congregation was largely poor, ill-educated ex-slaves, with all the resultant ills of those who, for varying reasons, had given up on life. The young priest worked tirelessly to minister to them, reminding them of the one thing that no human power could remove or tarnish: their Catholic faith.
A visiting priest met Fr. Tolton during this time and stayed with him and his mother, who by then had come to live in Chicago as her son’s housekeeper. The visiting priest found a hearty welcome. He also found a cultured and holy priest, one who complained of nothing and prayed for everything. At the end of the evening, when dinner had finished, the visitor observed how the younger priest took a set of Rosary beads hanging from a nail on a wall nearby and, with his mother beside him, knelt on the stone floor to recite the Rosary – just as they always had done, not least when they had arrived frightened and anxious having fled slavery those years previously.
Unexpectedly, when aged only 43, Fr. Tolton fell sick after attending a retreat for priests. Just outside the train station, he collapsed on the street. As an ambulance was called, a crowd gathered around the unusual sight of a black man dressed in a faded cassock. He was taken to a nearby hospital. On July 9, 1897, he died as a priest should – worn out in the care of his flock.
Fr. Tolton asked that he be buried in Quincy. His body was returned there and interred in a simple grave by St. Peter’s Church. It was the same church where he had served Mass and given catechism classes after he had finished his work at the local tobacco factory. Some were surprised that he had chosen to be buried in the town that had shunned him. Perhaps they had forgotten that it was there, decades earlier, that a frightened black woman had come with her three small children having fled slavery to find freedom, and where a hope for a better future was born for her and her children.
St. Monica’s, the church for which Fr. Tolton had expended so much energy and time, was abandoned in 1924 and later razed to the ground. But faith is more than bricks and mortar. In 2011, after an initial investigation at the behest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, Fr. Augustine Tolton was declared a Servant of God. On June 12, 2019, Pope Francis authorized the promulgation for a Decree of Heroic Virtue, advancing Fr. Tolton’s cause that ultimately may result in him being declared a canonized saint. With the promulgation of the decree, Fr. Tolton was granted the title Venerable. The ‘stone’ rejected had become a ‘living stone’, one upon which future generations would build.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!