s one of the most beautiful of
churches.

The rise of Negro Catholic churches in the District of Columbia as
well as throughout the United States has been less extensive for the
reason that not very many Negroes have been attracted to this
denomination because of its ritualistic appeal, and those who have
become adherents to the Catholic faith have been treated with so much
more of the spirit of Christ than they have been by other sects, that
the tendency toward independent church establishments has not been so
pronounced. Early in the history of the District of Columbia Rev.
Leonard Neale, the Archbishop of Georgetown, his brother, the Rev.
Francis Neale of the Holy Trinity Church, and Father Van Lomell,
pastor of the same church in 1807, were all friends of the Negroes,
showing no distinction on account of color in the establishment of
parish schools and the uplift of the people. The same policy was
followed by Father De Theux, who in 1817 succeeded Father Macelroy,
who established a Sunday School and labored with a great deal of
devotion to bring them into the church. The Catholic Church was free
in all of its privileges to all persons regardless of color. This was
especially true of St. Patrick's Church under its founder, Father
Matthew, who permitted the poorest Negro to kneel at the altar side by
side with the highest personages in the land. The same was observed in
St. Aloysius Church and in St. Mary's Church at Alexandria. The
Catholics were the last to change their attitude toward the Negro
during the critical antislavery period of the thirties, forties, and
fifties, when the Protestant churches practically excluded the Negroes
from their Sunday Schools and congregations. This explains why the
Negro Catholics organized in the District of Columbia during the early
period only one Catholic church of their own, St. Martin's, although
the Negro Catholics constituted a considerable part of the Negro
population.

The actual separation of the Negroes in the Catholic Church did not
take place until the Civil War itself necessitated certain changes to
meet the special needs of the Negroes in their new status. The
establishment of St. Augustine's Church, however, somewhat antedated
this. Before the organization of this church there was established a
school meeting the special needs of the Negroes on L Street, and out
of that developed the organization of this church in 1863. The moving
spirit in this undertaking was F