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The rich history of St. Augustine Catholic Church [1]

['Tammy C. Barney', 'More Tammy C. Barney', 'Verite News']

Date: 2024-02-02  

St. Augustine Catholic Church in Tremé received a Preserving Black Churches grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. The $200,000 grant will help with building repairs.

St. Augustine had been raising money towards its restoration when Hurricane Ida caused more damage in 2021. Since then, Mass has been celebrated in the adjoining Parish Hall.

Eight years before St. Augustine was established, Jeanne Marie Aliquot, a wealthy French woman, purchased the home of plantation owner Claude Tremé from the city of New Orleans. Tremé had subdivided his estate and sold large portions to free people of color. According to the church’s website, Aliquot sold the house in 1836 to the Ursuline Sisters, who sold it in 1840 to the Carmelites, who used the home for their motherhouse. The next year, Bishop Antoine Blanc gave free people of color permission to build a church.

As construction neared completion, an intense competition – “The War of the Pews” – ensued. Free people of color started to buy pews for their families. When white people, according to the church, heard about that, they began to buy pews too. The “war’” ended with free people of color buying most of the pews. They actually owned three pews to every one white-owned pew.

The free people of color took their purchasing power one step further by buying all the side aisle pews and giving them to enslaved people, providing them a place to worship.

“This mix of pews resulted in … one large row of free people of color, one large row of whites with a smattering of ethnic folk, and two outer aisles of slaves,” the online church history reads.

Dedicated on Oct. 9, 1842, St. Augustine Catholic Church was considered “the most racially integrated congregation of its time.”

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[1] Url: https://veritenews.org/2024/02/02/the-rich-history-of-st-augustine-catholic-church/

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