Academic literature on the topic 'Bombay Church Union'

Abstract I am sitting toward the back of the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in South Chicago, watching clusters of people arrive for the night’s novena service in honor of Saint Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of hopeless cases and lost causes, whose national shrine is housed there. The people coming into the warm glow of the church’s electric candles from the darkened, already chilly October streets are wearing windbreakers emblazoned with the names of local unions, fraternal organizations, sports teams, and police and fire auxiliaries over old sweaters. One young woman sports a white quilted sateen bomber jacket with the words “Club Flamingo” arching across her shoulders above the bird itself, silhouetted against a blazing hot-pink tropical sun.

Abstract Then Smith’s song first proclaimed America a “sweet land of liberty” and 1 \i a “land of the noble free” at Boston’s Park Street Church on 4July 1831, ‘over two million Americans were in bondage. In fact, a majority of the nation’s residents, including Native Americans, slaves, and women, were denied the franchise and other legal rights. Then-president Andrew Jackson was a slaveholder who wagered his human property on horse races and championed the removal of all Native Americans from lands east of the Mississippi. In 1831, Ohio disqualified African Americans from jury duty, Indiana required all African Americans entering the state to post bond, Mississippi made it illegal for free African Americans to remain in the state, and the white citizens of New Haven, Connecticut, voted seven hundred to four to prevent the construction of a college for African Americans.1Thus, despite Smith’s nationalist and evangelical fervor, not all (or even most) Americans could embrace ‘‘America”‘s promises without raising serious questions about the state of the union. Even in Boston, where ‘‘America” premiered and Smith’s fellow reformers held positions of high privilege, public transportation, schools, lecture halls, housing, churches, and public entertainment were divided along the color line. When an African American came to own a pew on the “whites only” lower floor of Boston’s Park Street Church one year before ‘‘America” was first performed there, he was prevented from occupying it. The Liberator reported that at the Sabbath school singers’ premiere performance of ‘‘America,” “the colored boys were permitted to occupy pews one-fourth the way up the side aisle;’ while “the colored girls took their seats by the door, as usual.”2 For many Americans, then, singing of a “sweet land of liberty” meant denying the reality of their own experience.