Research Catalog

Title

Crossing parish boundaries : race, sports, and Catholic youth in Chicago, 1914-1954 / Timothy B. Neary.

Author

Neary, Timothy B., 1970-

Publication

Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, [2016]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

vii, 293 pages : illustrations, map; 24 cm.

Summary

Controversy erupted in spring 2001 when Chicago's mostly white Southside Catholic Conference youth sports league rejected the application of the predominantly black St. Sabina grade school. Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, interracialism seemed stubbornly unattainable, and the national spotlight once again turned to the history of racial conflict in Catholic parishes. It's widely understood that midcentury, working class, white ethnic Catholics were among the most virulent racists, but, as Crossing Parish Boundaries shows, that's not the whole story. In this book, Timothy B. Neary reveals the history of Bishop Bernard Sheil's Catholic Youth Organization (CYO), which brought together thousands of young people of all races and religions from Chicago's racially segregated neighborhoods to take part in sports and educational programming. Tens of thousands of boys and girls participated in basketball, track and field, and, the most popular sport of all, boxing, which regularly filled Chicago Stadium with roaring crowds. The history of Bishop Sheil and the CYO shows a cosmopolitan version of American Catholicism, one that is usually overshadowed by accounts of white ethnic Catholics aggressively resisting the racial integration of their working-class neighborhoods. By telling the story of Catholic-sponsored interracial cooperation within Chicago, Crossing Parish Boundaries complicates our understanding of northern urban race relations in the mid-twentieth century.

Series Statement

Historical studies of urban America

Uniform Title

Historical studies of urban America.

Subject

• Sheil, Bernard J. 1888-1969
• Sheil, Bernard J. 1888-1969
• Catholic Youth Organization > History
• Catholic Youth Organization
• 1900-1999
• African American youth > Chicago
• Catholic youth > Chicago
• African Americans > Chicago > History > 20th century
• Social action > Chicago > History > 20th century
• Parishes > Chicago > History > 20th century
• Race relations > Religious aspects
• Jeunesse noire américaine > Chicago
• Jeunesse catholique > Chicago
• Noirs américains > Chicago > Histoire > 20e siècle
• Action sociale > Chicago > Histoire > 20e siècle
• Paroisses > Chicago > Histoire > 20e siècle
• Relations raciales > Aspect religieux
• African American youth
• African Americans
• Catholic youth
• Parishes
• Race relations
• Race relations > Religious aspects
• Social action
• Chicago (Ill.) > History > 20th century
• Illinois > Chicago

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-267) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Minority within a Minority: African Americans Encounter Catholicism in the Urban North -- "We Had Standing": Black and Catholic in Bronzeville -- For God and Country: Bishop Sheil and the CYO -- African American Participation in the CYO -- The Fight Outside the Ring: Antiracism in the CYO -- "Ahead of His Time": The Legacy of Bishop Sheil and the Unfulfilled Promise of Catholic Interracialism.

ISBN

• 9780226388762
• 022638876X
• 9780226388939
• 022638893X

LCCN

2016001675

OCLC

• 934939002
• SCSB-11804908

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library