January 19, 2001

Loyola to create Center for the Study of Catholics in the South

by Helen Ellis, Assistant Director of Public Affairs

A valuable source of information about New Orleans' rich cultural past, the archives housed in the Loyola University New Orleans J. Edgar and Louise S. Monroe Library, will soon be more accessible to scholars and to the general public. Loyola has received a $500,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to establish the Center for the Study of Catholics in the South. The center will be a collaboration between the humanities faculties of the university and the Monroe Library, where the archives are housed.

The grant will enable a professional archivist to be hired to begin shaping the collection into a useful form, available for scholarly research. Loyola will raise an additional $1,500,000 to endow the center and match the federal grant. NEH grants are given to non-profit institutions to improve and stabilize the quality of humanities activities.

This project is directed by David C. Estes, associate professor of English and a specialist in southern literature and folklore, and Darla H. Rushing, associate professor and coordinator of the library's technical services and special collections.

Among the noteworthy holdings in Loyola's collection are the archives of the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus. The provincial archives at Loyola consist of 340 linear feet of manuscript materials, including more than 7,000 printed volumes. These records date from 1837 to the present and include complete regional data of Loyola's founding Jesuits from New Mexico to the Carolinas. Financial and staffing records, diaries, personal effects, and personnel records for every Jesuit from then to now, are in the archives. Records of Jesuits working during yellow fever epidemics, and their work with various immigrant groups like the Irish, Italians, and now Vietnamese are all contained in the papers.

Jesuits were among the earliest explorers and settlers of the South. A Jesuit chaplain accompanied Iberville on his second expedition, and Jesuits are credited with introducing sugar cane to Louisiana. The archives at Loyola contain original documents dating from the re-establishment of the mission in New Orleans by French Jesuits from Lyon is 1837 and the founding of the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus in 1847.

The papers of two contemporary Jesuits are also housed in the collection. The documents of the Rev. Louis J. Twomey, S.J., a Loyola-based Jesuit who was active in civil and labor rights movements in the 1950s and 1960s, are contained in the archive, as are those of the Joseph J. Fichter, S.J. Fichter, author of more than 30 books about the church and society, conducted numerous studies of racism in the Catholic church.

Other documents in the archive paint a varied picture of New Orleans culture and history. A collection of letters written by Catholic novelist Walker Percy written to Loyola Jesuits and the mayoral papers of Loyola alumnus Moon Landrieu also are housed in the archive. A recent acquisition to the collection is the work of Phil Johnson, A'50. The collection contains more than 10,000 editorials written and delivered by Johnson in his years on WWL-TV from 1961 to 1999. The Archives of the Ecology Center of Louisiana and Darryl Malek-Wiley's papers document the work of environmental activists in the Gulf South and relate environmentalism to the issues of social justice. The papers of Janet Mary Riley, B'36, L'52, chronicle the career of one of the first women in the nation to hold a professorial position in a law school and who worked as a catalyst for change in community property law and in laws regarding the abuse and poverty of children and the elderly.

The center will also promote the study of the significance of Catholic individuals and ethnic groups and will also sponsor a variety of humanities programs for the general public. Public exhibitions of the materials contained in the archive, an electronic journal, and online archives are other benefits of the endowment.

Regional Catholicism in the United States is currently receiving increased

attention from scholars. The center will respond to this interest through regional and national programs that further knowledge of the diverse expressions of Catholic culture in the South. These include the traditions of Cajuns, Creoles, African-Americans, and a wide variety of immigrant groups dating from the 19th century up to present-day refugees from Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. There are currently more than 10 million Catholics in the South, approximately 11 percent of the total population. The percentage of southern Catholics has nearly tripled since 1970.