Educated in the Ecclesiastical Square: Social Divide and the Redemptorist Schools of New Orleans, Louisiana

• In Event: 42.036 - Historical Perspectives on Educational Opportunity

Abstract

This study examines how existing ethnic and social divisions between lower class Catholic French, German, and Irish immigrants in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century New Orleans forced the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists) to devise an ethnically divided system of parochial schools in order to enhance educational opportunities for immigrant children. Despite sharing a geographic space (the Irish Channel), immigrants self-segregated by linguistic, cultural, and nationalistic traditions and opposed the idea of a single church and school system despite their limited resources. As the Catholic Church of the nineteenth century was more concerned with “saving souls” than ethnic unification, Redemptorist parochial education developed alongside deeply rooted cultural divisions and contributed to long-lasting ethnic separations between lower class immigrant populations.

Authors

• R. Eric Platt, University of Southern Mississippi

• Melandie McGee, University of Southern Mississippi