Federated Colored Catholics

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1892 Colored Catholic Congress
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Institutions Churches Basilicas Basilica of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception (Norfolk, Virginia) Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica Other St Augustine (New Orleans) St Augustine (D.C.) St Francis Xavier (Baltimore) St Benedict the Moor (NYC) Most Pure Heart of Mary (Mobile) Religious communities Oblate Sisters of Providence Sisters of the Holy Family Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary The Josephites Society of African Missions Fraternal orders Knights of Peter Claver Schools Xavier University of Louisiana Claver College St. Augustine High School (New Orleans) St. Augustine Seminary (Bay St. Louis) St. Anthony's Mission House Organizations Colored Catholic Congress Federated Colored Catholics National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus National Black Sisters' Conference National Black Catholic Seminarians' Association National Black Catholic Lay Caucus The National Office for Black Catholics National Association of Black Catholic Administrators National Black Catholic Congress Black Catholic Theological Symposium Institute for Black Catholic Studies National Association of Black Catholic Deacons
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The Federated Colored Catholics (FCC), originally the Committee against the Extension of Race Prejudice in the Church, then the Committee for the Advancement of Colored Catholics, was a Black Catholic organization founded in 1925 by Thomas Wyatt Turner.^[1] It was a kind of spiritual successor to Daniel Rudd's Colored Catholic Congress movement (1889-1904), providing an organized voice in an era of nearly unchecked anti-Blackness and systemic racism. After a hostile takeover, it folded in the 1950s.

The FCC was originally founded in December 1925 as a small group advocating for Black uplift, and later expanded within the local area before becoming a federated group of chapters in various other cities.

They engaged in a number of social justice efforts, including a concerted push for more Black priests, who at the time were extremely few. (US seminaries had been entirely closed to Blacks until the late 19th century, and to a continuing extent thereafter.) The FCC's main target in this regard was the Society of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, a mostly White order that ministered specifically to African-Americans. At the FCC's meeting in 1928 in Cincinnati, several of the first openly Black Catholic priests were mentioned in the program, including Frs Augustus Tolton, John Henry Dorsey, SSJ; Charles Uncles, SSJ; Stephen Theobald, Norman Dukette; Joseph A. John, SMA; and Augustine Derricks, OSST.^[2]

The clashes between the FCC and the Josephites would eventually lead to the expulsion of FCC firebrand Marcellus Dorsey (brother of Josephite priest John Dorsey) from the Knights of Peter Claver, a Black Catholic fraternal organization the Josephites helped found in 1909.

Two White Jesuit priests, John LaFarge Jr. and William Markoe, later became major backers of and leaders in the FCC, eventually pushing the organization into a more interracial direction—against Turner's will. The group would eventually splinter over this conflict, with LaFarge establishing the short-lived Catholic Interracial Council of New York, which spawned several other chapters.^[3]

The FCC would itself die off in 1952, eventually succeeded by other national Black Catholic organizations such as the National Black Catholic Congress.