via US Catholic
On the evening of Sunday, May 10, 1891, Father Augustus Tolton, the nation’s first self-identified black priest, traveled to a home in Chicago’s “Negro district” to administer death rites to a pious, but once-lapsed laywoman. Writing about the incident two days later, Father Tolton noted that the “colored woman had been nine years away from her duties because she was hurled out of a white church and even cursed at by the Irish members.”
Inspired by this woman’s enduring faith in the face of such unholy discrimination, Father Tolton, the son of devout Catholic slaves, documented her faith testimony and in the process gave a voice to the legions of anonymous and unheralded black women upon whose shoulders the African American Catholic community has historically rested. “She sent for me,” Father Tolton wrote, “and thanked God that she had me to send for.”
- See more at: http://www.uscatholic.org/blog/201402/celebrating-unsung-black-catholic-women-us-history-28501#sthash.1KEGGQ7B.dpuf