Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North (Historical Studies of Urban America)

In the summer of 1974, a crowd of Irish-American Catholics in south Boston, protesting the introduction of busing, screamed abuse and threw eggs at Edward Kennedy as he walked into a public elementary school leading a little black girl by the hand. It was a moment redolent of the ironies and passions of American Catholicism's divisions over racism. As McGreevy's excellent history reveals, that protest mob reflected a wider struggle within the church. Many priests and nuns were in the forefront of the civil rights movement. And yet, such liberals often acted without taking into account the fears and insecurities of the traditionally white and working-class congregations in the local parishes. McGreevy vividly brings to life this struggle within the church between a universal vision and a parochial one.