Manhattanville Resolution

Last updated

The Manhattanville Resolution was one of eight reports written by religious officials and students at Manhattanville College to advocate for desegregation and the civil rights of African Americans. [1] It was written in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. The report connects Catholic ideals to abolitionist ideals in order to defend the human rights of African Americans. [1]

Contents

Resolution

Manhattanville College hosted a multitude of students and faculty interested in the civil rights aspects of the Catholic Church. The resolution is a series of eight written by students in 1933. [1] The students at Manhattanville College were inspired by a man named George Hunton, the editor for the Interacial Review , a journal that focused on the Catholic opinion of interracialism. [2]

During the 1930s, the effects of the Great Depression increased rapidly, especially for poor communities such as African American ones. The Manhattanville students wrote the 8 resolutions because of the racial violence, discrimination, and other injustices African Americans faced. [3]

The Manhattanville students were motivated by Hunton's speech that they worked to pass the 8 resolutions to advocate for interracialism. The president of the college at the time, Grace Dammann-RSCJ, supported the interracialism of Manhattanville College and was an advocate for racial justice along with her students. [4]

Message of Resolution

The Manhattan Resolutions were adopted by college students to combat racial injustice. [5] There are a total of 8 resolutions that are declared in the resolution.

  1. The first resolution declared that “the negro as a human being and as a citizen is entitled to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and to the essential opportunities of life and full the full measure of social justice.” [1] The first resolution alludes to the constitution by using the phrase “right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” [1]
  2. The second resolution is “to be courteous and kind to every colored person, remembering the heavy yoke of injustice and discrimination he is bearing. To remember that no race or group in America had endured that many handicaps that are his to-day.” [1]
  3. The third resolution states, “to say a kind word for him on every proper occasion.” [1]
  4. The fourth resolution was, “not to speak slightingly or use nicknames which tend to humiliate, off end or discourage him.” [1]
  5. Number five states, “to remember that the catholic church and the catholic program of social justice has been the “greatest hope of the colored race.” [1]
  6. Followed by number 6 which states, “to recognize that the negro shares my membership in the mystical body of Christ and the privileges that flow there from and conduct myself in accordance therewith.” [1]
  7. The seventh resolution states, “to give liberally on the Sundays of the year when the collections are devoted to the heroic missionaries laboring among the Negro group.” [1]
  8. The last resolution states, “to become increasingly interested in the welfare of the negro; to engage actively in some form of catholic action looking to the betterment of his condition, spiritually and materially.” [1]

A Committee of Catholic College Graduates and Undergraduates

The Manhattanville Resolutions were put together by “A Committee of Catholic College Graduates and Undergraduates” and “The Interracial Committee of the Brooklyn Catholic Action Council”, and the Forward was written by Francis S. Mosely.

Impact

The Manhattanville Resolution became the “basis for a Catholic interracial program at Catholic colleges.” [2] The resolution began a series of events leading to educational interracialism. The interracialism program for Catholic colleges around the country met many times after the resolution had been published to discuss further actions to take to desegregate schools. [5] The Catholic colleges discussed these proposals at the many Catholic Interracial Conferences in starting in 1935. [2]

The Manhattanville Resolution initiated the public discussion between Catholic colleges about interracialism. This impacted the civil rights movement as a whole because particular religious support for education amongst other things bolstered the argument that African Americans are deprived of basic human rights.

Related Research Articles

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which had held that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal". The Court's unanimous decision in Brown, and its related cases, paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Letter from Birmingham Jail</span> Open letter written by Martin Luther King, Jr

The "Letter from Birmingham Jail", also known as the "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" and "The Negro Is Your Brother", is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr. It says that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take direct action rather than waiting potentially forever for justice to come through the courts. Responding to being referred to as an "outsider", King writes: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Racial equality is when people of all races and ethnicities are treated in an egalitarian/equal manner. Racial equality occurs when institutions give individuals legal, moral, and political rights. In present-day Western society, equality among races continues to become normative. Prior to the early 1960s, attaining equality was difficult for African, Asian, and Indigenous people. However, in more recent years, legislation is being passed ensuring that all individuals receive equal opportunities in treatment, education, employment, and other areas of life. Racial equality can refer to equal opportunities or formal equality based on race or refer to equal representation or equality of outcomes for races, also called substantive equality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manhattanville University</span> Private university in Purchase, New York, U.S.

Manhattanville University is a private university in Purchase, New York, United States. Founded in 1841 as a school at 412 Houston Street in Lower Manhattan, it was initially known as the Academy of the Sacred Heart. In 1917, the academy received a charter from the Regents of the State of New York to raise the school officially to a collegiate level, granting degrees as the College of the Sacred Heart. In 1937, it became known as Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, and from 1966 to 2024 as Manhattanville College.

This is a timeline of African-American history, the part of history that deals with African Americans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greensboro sit-ins</span> 1960 non-violent protests in the United States

The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in February to July 1960, primarily in the Woolworth store—now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum—in Greensboro, North Carolina, which led to the F. W. Woolworth Company department store chain removing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. While not the first sit-in of the civil rights movement, the Greensboro sit-ins were an instrumental action, and also the best-known sit-ins of the civil rights movement. They are considered a catalyst to the subsequent sit-in movement, in which 70,000 people participated. This sit-in was a contributing factor in the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nashville sit-ins</span> Nonviolent protests against racial segregation in Tennessee (1960)

The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, were part of a protest to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The sit-in campaign, coordinated by the Nashville Student Movement and the Nashville Christian Leadership Council, was notable for its early success and its emphasis on disciplined nonviolence. It was part of a broader sit-in movement that spread across the southern United States in the wake of the Greensboro sit-ins in North Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racial segregation in the United States</span> De jure and de facto separation of whites and non-whites

Facilities and services such as housing, healthcare, education, employment, and transportation have been systematically separated in the United States based on racial categorizations. Segregation was the legally or socially enforced separation of African Americans from whites, as well as the separation of other ethnic minorities from majority and mainstream communities. While mainly referring to the physical separation and provision of separate facilities, it can also refer to other manifestations such as prohibitions against interracial marriage, and the separation of roles within an institution. The U.S. Armed Forces were formally segregated until 1948, as black units were separated from white units but were still typically led by white officers.

The Commission on Interracial Cooperation (1918–1944) was an organization founded in Atlanta, Georgia, December 18, 1918, and officially incorporated in 1929. Will W. Alexander, pastor of a local white Methodist church, was head of the organization. It was formed in the aftermath of violent race riots that occurred in 1917 in several southern cities. In 1944 it merged with the Southern Regional Council.

Harold Robert Perry, S.V.D. was an African-American clergyman of the Catholic Church. An auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New Orleans for more than twenty years beginning in 1966, he was the first openly African-American Catholic bishop, the second overall, and the first since 1875.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John LaFarge Jr.</span> American Jesuit Catholic priest (1880–1963)

John LaFarge Jr. was an American Jesuit Catholic priest known for his activism against racism and anti-semitism. Involved in the heyday of Thomas Wyatt Turner's Federated Colored Catholics. LaFarge founded an offshoot, the Catholic Interracial Council in New York City. Branches also grew in Philadelphia and Chicago. In the run-up to World War II, he worked on a draft of a papal encyclical against racist and totalitarian ideologies for Pope Pius XI; entitled Humani generis unitas, though it was never promulgated due to the death of Pius XI on February 10, 1939.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States</span> Laws against interracial marriage

In the United States, many U.S. states historically had anti-miscegenation laws which prohibited interracial marriage and, in some states, interracial sexual relations. Some of these laws predated the establishment of the United States, and some dated to the later 17th or early 18th century, a century or more after the complete racialization of slavery. Nine states never enacted anti-miscegenation laws, and 25 states had repealed their laws by 1967. In that year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that such laws are unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">School segregation in the United States</span> Racial separation in schools

School segregation in the United States was the segregation of students based on their ethnicity. While not prohibited from having schools, various minorities were barred from most schools, schools for whites. Segregation laws were dismantled in 1954 by the U.S. Supreme Court because of the successes being attained during the Civil Rights Movement. Segregation continued longstanding exclusionary policies in much of the Southern United States after the Civil War. School integration in the United States took place at different times in different areas and often met resistance. Jim Crow laws codified segregation. These laws were influenced by the history of slavery and discrimination in the US. Secondary schools for African Americans in the South were called training schools instead of high schools in order to appease racist whites and focused on vocational education. After the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, which banned segregated school laws, school segregation took de facto form. School segregation declined rapidly during the late 1960s and early 1970s as the government became strict on schools' plans to combat segregation more effectively as a result of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. Voluntary segregation by income appears to have increased since 1990. Racial segregation has either increased or stayed constant since 1990, depending on which definition of segregation is used. In general, definitions based on the amount of interaction between black and white students show increased racial segregation, while definitions based on the proportion of black and white students in different schools show racial segregation remaining approximately constant.

Grace Cowardin Dammann, RSCJ (1872–1945) was a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart (RSCJ) and a president of Manhattanville College. She was a long time civil rights activist. Under her leadership, Manhattanville College admitted its first African American student in 1938. The identity of the student is unknown, although her picture ran in the Amsterdam News in the mid 1940s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eleanor O'Byrne</span> American Catholic Nun

Mother Eleanor O'Byrne R.S.C.J. was a civil rights activist and the fifth president of Manhattanville College. She was best known for her efforts to reform the American educational system in order to provide equity for women and African Americans, as well as facilitating the transfer of the Manhattanville College campus from New York City to Purchase, New York. She later was president of Universidad del Sagrado Corazón.

Prior to the civil rights movement in South Carolina, African Americans in the state had very few political rights. South Carolina briefly had a majority-black government during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, but with the 1876 inauguration of Governor Wade Hampton III, a Democrat who supported the disenfranchisement of blacks, African Americans in South Carolina struggled to exercise their rights. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation kept African Americans from voting, and it was virtually impossible for someone to challenge the Democratic Party, which ran unopposed in most state elections for decades. By 1940, the voter registration provisions written into the 1895 constitution effectively limited African-American voters to 3,000—only 0.8 percent of those of voting age in the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">W. Sterling Cary</span> American Christian minister (1927–2021)

William Sterling Cary was an American Christian minister. From 1972 to 1975, he was the first Black president of the National Council of Churches (NCC) in its history.

Earl M. Johnson Sr. (1928–1988) was a lawyer and civil rights advocate in Florida.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John R. Slattery</span>

John Richard Slattery was an American former Catholic priest, activist, missionary, writer, and lawyer. He was first a member of the Mill Hill Missionaries, later becoming in 1893 a co-founder and the first superior general of the Society of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 "The Manhattanville Resolutions | Digital Culture". dcmny.org. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  2. 1 2 3 Zielinski, Martin A. (1988). "Working for Interracial Justice: The Catholic Interracial Council of New York, 1934-1964". U.S. Catholic Historian. 7 (2/3): 233–262. ISSN   0735-8318. JSTOR   25153831.
  3. ↑ William A. Sundstrom, "Last hired, first fired? Unemployment and urban black workers during the Great Depression." Journal of Economic History 52.2 (1992): 415-429.
  4. ↑ Byrne, Patricia (1995). "A Tradition of Educating Women: The Religious of the Sacred Heart and Higher Education". U.S. Catholic Historian. 13 (4): 49–79. ISSN   0735-8318. JSTOR   25154525.
  5. 1 2 Keller, Academic Dean and Professor of Church History Emeritae Rosemary Skinner; Keller, Rosemary Skinner; Ruether, Rosemary Radford; Cantlon, Marie (2006). Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America: Women and religion: methods of study and reflection. Indiana University Press. ISBN   978-0-253-34686-5.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.