Catholics were thrown into violent economic competition with slaves and free Negroes, and their
fight to escape slave competition easily resolved
itself into a serious anti-Negro hatred which was
back of much of the rioting in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York. It was not then until the
20th century that the church began active work by
establishing a special mission for Negroes and
engaging in it nearly two hundred white priests.
This new impetus was caused by the benevolence
of Katherine Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed
Sacrament. Notwithstanding all this and since
the beginning of the 18th century only six Negroes
have been ordained to the Catholic priesthood.
The main question of the conversion of the Negro to Christianity in the United States was therefore the task of the Protestant Church and it was, if the truth must be told, a task which it did not at all relish. The whole situation was fraught with perplexing contradictions; Could Christians be slaves? Could slaves be Christians? Was the object of slavery the Christianizing of the black man, and when the black man was Christianized was the mission of slavery done and ended? Was it possible to make modern Christians of these persons whom the new slavery began to paint as brutes? The English Episcopal Church finally began the work in 1701 through
