Challenge: Substantial minority of Catholic African Americans?

What would it take for there to be a significant number of black Catholics, especially in the south? Bonus points if the Knights of Columbus or other fraternal RCC organizations unite to fight the Klan in secret.
 
Have the French consolidate their position in Southern Louisiana after the French and Indian war. It's later powerful enough to resist absorption into the US for several decades more, and all the slaves going through New Orleans are converted to Catholicism.
 
If you're willing to go the annexation route, taking large areas of the Caribbean or Central America would work.

Otherwise what Socrates proposed strikes me as the most likely.
 
Have more African slaves transported to America from Angola and the Kongo Empire.

What does the origin has to do? They are catholic now, but in those times they were not. Regardless of origin, slaves tended to convert(or be forced to) to the religion of their masters.
 
A Pod would be Britain ruling over Cuba, they still halt the Slave trade in 1807. Cuba goes through a bit of economic shock, but it is in transition into a more manufacturing focused economy. Meanwhile Haiti still erupts in revolution, but the White French don't escape to Cuba like they did in otl. In OTL the rich French immediately began importing a huge amount of slaves. Instead the French and their slaves immigrate across the Southern US states.
 
There was a substantial increase of Catholic immigrants to the U.S. by 1850, prompting the rise of the Nativist movement. Could any of those immigrants have preached to freemen?
 
An explicitly anti-Slavery Pope leads to a heavily Catholic abolitionist movement, and many Catholics joining the Freedmen's Bureau as teachers?
 
This would damage the South even more than it was damaged OTL.

"Not only are they niggers, but Papists!" The South inherited a long, rich tradition of anti-Catholicism from the Scotch-Irish, and it continues in many places today. One of the groups the Klu Klux Klan persecuted was Catholics, for example.
 
I'm sure this could lead to more conflict, but perhaps the black Catholics would find support in their white co-religionists against the Klan?
 
An explicitly anti-Slavery Pope leads to a heavily Catholic abolitionist movement, and many Catholics joining the Freedmen's Bureau as teachers?

Well, the Church is already strongly against slavery by the late 1700s. In Supremo Apostolatus, a Papal Bull denouncing slavery as an institution was made in 1839 but had little effect on the Americans.


It would not be that much of a stretch for a Pope to make the global abolition of slavery as a personal goal during his reign. It wouldn't be a realistic goal, but he could try. He might run into trouble with slave-owning Catholics in the US.
 
One of the groups the Klu Klux Klan persecuted was Catholics, for example.

That was the Second Klan, in the 1920s.

The First Klan was much more concerned about blacks and their white allies.

Now, if the First Klan perceived Catholics as being uniformly allied to the blacks, they might *become* anti-Catholic...
 
What does the origin has to do? They are catholic now, but in those times they were not. Regardless of origin, slaves tended to convert(or be forced to) to the religion of their masters.

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Nzinga a Nkuwu, aka João I of Kongo, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1491, following contact by Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão. So complete was the totalitarianism of the Congolese empire at the time that at João's conversion the entire kingdom became de jure a Catholic state. This was expanded upon by further rulers; Afonso I (Nzinga Mbemba) attributed his victory at the capitol of M'banza-Kongo against his half-brother Mpanzu a Kitima thanks to divine intervention in the form of a vision of the Virgin Mary and Saint James. Following said event Alfonso devoted himself to spreading the Catholic faith throughout his kingdom, creating religious institutions, particularly schools, to spread Catholicism. Rui d'Aguir, the Portuguese royal chaplain sent to advice Alfonso, famously declared that the emperor knew more about the tenants of the Christian faith than d'Aguir himself did. Alfonso's own son Henrique was sent to Europe to study, becoming an ordained priest in 1518 and Bishop of Utica, returning to Kongo in the early 1520s to basically run Kongo's new church system. He died in 1531, as he was preparing to travel to Europe for the Council of Trent.

You don't need Europeans (whites) converting/aiding African slaves to make them Catholic. Many Africans were Christians of one flavor or another long before the first American colonies were settled.
 
I've heard that blacks who use school vouchers often send their kids to parochial schools, despite being largely Protestant themselves.

If school-voucher programs were devised much earlier, one side-effect might be that many blacks convert to Catholicisim due to having a Catholic education even if they were brought up Protestant.

This POD is post-1900 though. Maybe if we have Catholic schools being established as an alternative to inferior Jim Crow schools by a Catholic hierarchy seeking to convert blacks?

If violent racists target them, they've pissed off the Catholic Church, and that could cause problems.
 
What would it take for there to be a significant number of black Catholics, especially in the south? Bonus points if the Knights of Columbus or other fraternal RCC organizations unite to fight the Klan in secret.

Historically, Texas was never the deep south and even during the civil war, had alot of lukewarm confederates and more than a few pro union counties. Most of the pro union counties were German Catholic. Also the post war Texas klan in not as powerful as in other areas.

Maybe..

Following the civil war, several orders of German Catholic nuns launch a systematic effort to educate recently freed slaves. German Catholics already living in Texas give the nuns a good support base. Conversion to Catholicism is not required, but is clearly welcomed.

Locally, there were few catholic slave owners in Texas. Rather, most local catholics (hispanic, German) were either pro union or very nominal confederates. Many freed slaves then associate protestant churches with slavery and their former masters. Meanwhile, catholicism is associated with not only education, but anti slavery attitudes in general. Many African Americans in Texas then convert to Catholicism. The Klan rants and raves, but lacks the strength in many Texas counties to do much about it.

Then...

The education / welcoming of converts moves to Missouri. Like Texas, there were few Catholic slave owners and a catholic minority (German speaking) was strongly pro union. Of course, "pro union" did not always mean "anti slavery", but the implied connection and the promise of education makes Missouri African Americans predisposed to Catholism. Catholic nuns use the same technique in Kentucky, but meet with less success. Even still a certain number do convert.
 
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... ಠ_ಠ

Nzinga a Nkuwu, aka João I of Kongo, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1491, following contact by Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão. So complete was the totalitarianism of the Congolese empire at the time that at João's conversion the entire kingdom became de jure a Catholic state. This was expanded upon by further rulers; Afonso I (Nzinga Mbemba) attributed his victory at the capitol of M'banza-Kongo against his half-brother Mpanzu a Kitima thanks to divine intervention in the form of a vision of the Virgin Mary and Saint James. Following said event Alfonso devoted himself to spreading the Catholic faith throughout his kingdom, creating religious institutions, particularly schools, to spread Catholicism. Rui d'Aguir, the Portuguese royal chaplain sent to advice Alfonso, famously declared that the emperor knew more about the tenants of the Christian faith than d'Aguir himself did. Alfonso's own son Henrique was sent to Europe to study, becoming an ordained priest in 1518 and Bishop of Utica, returning to Kongo in the early 1520s to basically run Kongo's new church system. He died in 1531, as he was preparing to travel to Europe for the Council of Trent.

You don't need Europeans (whites) converting/aiding African slaves to make them Catholic. Many Africans were Christians of one flavor or another long before the first American colonies were settled.

Yes, I knew some Africans(like Ethiopians) were Christian. And I don't discuss you about the early conversion of the rulers of Kongo. Rulers who converted to a religion different to the people's one was not uncommon back then. The Norse kings did so, the Saxons, the Lithuanians, and some others I don't remember now.

But what I am intending to say is that most of the common people, were not Catholics. Today, just like 55% of the population is Catholic, and a big share of it is mainly because of Portuguese missionaries in the XIX and XX Centuries. So if 10 slaves were captured in Angola in lets say 1650, the most probable thing is at most that 1 or 2 of them were Catholic while the rest were not.
 
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