Crossing Parish Boundaries
Race, Sports, and Catholic Youth in Chicago, 1914-1954
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.
About the Author
Timothy B. Neary is associate professor of history at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, and executive director of the Urban History Association.
Reviews
"Neary examines the understudied world of youth athletics, finding significant interracial cooperation by the mid-twentieth century. His well-researched study allows us to better understand the dynamics of – and limits to – such cooperation in a city marked by intense residential and racial segregation" – John T. McGreevy, Dean of the College of Arts and Letters , University of Notre Dame
"Neary has produced a work of wide reach and interest – a history of religion and race, sports and northern urban culture, and youthful engagement around issues of central significance to the mid-twentieth century US society and politics. It is not only exceptionally well researched and analytically careful and illuminative, but also written with an enviable clarity and simplicity of style. Neary helps fill out the storyline of John T. McGreevy's foundational work on US Catholicism and race, while advancing in a more thoroughgoing historical key the kind of analysis of Catholicism and sports culture undertaken in Julie Byrne's 'O God of Players'" – James P. McCartin, director, Fordham Center on Religion and Culture
"Neary's 'Crossing Parish Boundaries' tells an unexpected story. Previous historians have depicted the high walls of segregation dividing white ethnic neighborhoods from Chicago's African American ghettos. Yet in the middle decades of the twentieth century, Chicago's Catholic Youth Organization promoted interracial sports. In an era otherwise characterized by deep ethnic tensions, even violence, especially between the children of immigrants and the new black migrants to the city, Neary shows us how local Catholic leaders and parishioners deliberately and successfully resisted the bigotry of their times. 'Crossing Parish Boundaries' is a fine book, merging urban history, social history, and sports history in an elegant and insightful narrative" – Elliot Gorn, Joseph A. Gagliano Chair in American Urban History, Loyola University Chicago
