St. Augustine Catholic Church and a bit of history
I heard on WWOZ that St. Augustine was going to be having an event in honor of Martin Luther King’s birthday and so we went all went to check it out. We arrived right about the time the Mass was ending and walking into this church you know right away there are not a lot of Catholic churches in this country/world that are rocking out – something’s different. Something is different, this is the oldest African-American Catholic parish in the nation and recently, was almost sold by the Archdiocese as the Catholic belt tightening that took place across the United States over the past decade. Thankfully there was such a public outcry the church was spared. When free people of color organized in 1830s and received permission to build a church the Ursuline Sisters (those sisters again) donated the property with the condition that it be named St. Augustine after their patron saint, Augustine of Hippo. At the time there were pew fees so free people of color paid for extra pews so enslaved blacks could also attend. A few months before the dedication the people of color began to purchase pews for their families to sit and some white people, upon hearing this, started a campaign to buy more pews than colored folks. The War of the Pews began and ultimately was won by the free people of color who bought pews three to one and on both sides of the aisles. These aisle seats were given to the slaves. (Wikipedia)
Meanwhile, as I said, we arrived at the end of the rocking mass and then went into the Hall for the event, for $10 you could get a hot plate of red beans and rice and watch the performance. Unfortunately, the presentations didn’t approach the reverence of what you might expect from a black church on MLK weekend, but we passed a good time nonetheless and Tin seemed to enjoy it. We then went for a walk into the Quarter and had an Irish coffee and on the way out found ourselves a nice sofa at a nice price that we purchased for the den.
All in all – we had a good morning with friends and Tin and although it didn’t much feel as if a Martin Luther King celebration took place for us – it was our little adventure.
