The Federated Colored Catholics (FCC), originally the Committee against the Extension of Race Prejudice in the Church, then the Committee for the Advancement of Colored Catholics, was a
Black Catholic organization founded in 1925 by
Thomas Wyatt Turner
Thomas Wyatt Turner (March 16, 1877 – April 21, 1978) was an American civil rights activist, biologist and educator. He was the first Black American to receive a PhD in Botany, and helped found both the NAACP and the Federated Colored Catho ...
. It was a kind of
spiritual successor
A spiritual successor (sometimes called a spiritual sequel) is a product or fictional work that is similar to, or directly inspired by, another previous work, but (unlike a traditional prequel or sequel) does not explicitly continue the product lin ...
to
Daniel Rudd
Daniel Arthur Rudd (August 7, 1854December 3, 1933) was a Black Catholic journalist and early Civil Rights leader.
He is known for starting in 1885 what has been called "the first newspaper printed by and for Black Americans", the ''Ohio Tribun ...
's
Colored Catholic Congress
The Colored Catholic Congress movement was a series of meetings organized by Daniel Rudd in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for African-American Catholics to discuss issues affecting their communities, churches, and other institutions.
Pa ...
movement (1889-1904), providing an organized voice in an era of nearly unchecked
anti-Blackness
Negrophobia (also termed anti-Blackness) is characterized by a fear, hatred or extreme aversion to Black people and Black culture worldwide. Caused amongst other factors by racism and traumatic events and circumstances, symptoms of this phobia i ...
and
systemic racism
Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society or an organization. It manifests as discrimination in areas such as criminal justice, employment, housing, healt ...
.
History
The FCC was originally founded as a small group advocating for Black uplift, and later expanded within the local area before becoming a federated group of chapters in various other cities.
They engaged in a number of social justice efforts, including a concerted push for more Black priests, who at the time were extremely few. (US seminaries had been entirely closed to Blacks until the late 19th century, and to a continuing extent thereafter.) The FCC's main target in this regard was the
Society of St