Forming and Reforming National Parishes: The Archdiocese of Newark’s Confrontation with Race and Ethnicity in the 1930s

ABSTRACT: This article traces the histories of two parish communities in Montclair, New Jersey, during the 1930s—Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saint Peter Claver—the first an Italian national parish and the second a Black mission church, located just five blocks from one another. Drawing on archival documents and oral histories of parish life, this paper examines the divergent ways that parishioners and clergy imagined and constructed racial and ethnic identity at each site. As Newark’s racial makeup shifted during this decade, spurred by the twin effects of newly imposed limits on European immigration and the mass in-migration of African Americans from the South, the diocese attempted to cultivate an image of the Catholic Church as a white institution, rather than a collection of ethnic immigrant parishes. This “whitening” of the church’s image coincided with diocesan efforts to recruit Black converts. This paper compares the distinct modes of surveillance and discipline targeted at these two examples of “ethnic parishes” as a means of assessing the transforming racial politics and priorities of Newark’s church leadership.