The new history course, The Society of St. Edmund in the Era of Civil Rights, uses archival photos, documents, interviews and a trip to Selma, Alabama, to enlighten students about the Edmundites’ crucial role in American history.
by Caroline Crawford and Elizabeth Scott
History of Hope slideshow
More than 40 years and 1,000 miles separate the lives of Saint Michael’s College students from the crushing segregation that was a way of life in Selma, Alabama, for much of its history. This past spring, a new history class, “The Society of St. Edmund in the Era of Civil Rights,” combined Edmundite history, civil rights history, archives and travel to Selma to give 12 students a powerful, first-person perspective on the impact that the Edmundites had on the quest for justice during tumultuous and oppressive times.
Archivist Elizabeth Scott and Professor of History Susan Ouellette taught the 400-level seminar together, exploring the era of American civil rights and the involvement of the Society of St. Edmund through secondary writings and primary source material from the Edmundite Southern Missions, much of which has been housed in Durick Library since 2004. A large collection remains in Selma. Scott was recently awarded a $5,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to work with a consultant to assess the future additions to the Edmundite archives.
In addition to a typical semester of readings, discussions and papers, the course also required that students perform 10 hours of actual hands-on archival activities, processing some of the Edmundite documents from Selma that are already housed at Saint Michael’s. The exposure was good for the students, said Scott. “I’ve forgotten what it was like to work with primary documents for the first time. It was exciting to see students react to reading a 75-year old letter written by priests we have named buildings after. The archives include journals and letters that document the Edmundites’ earliest days in Selma in the 1930s to their establishment of a hospital and a school for the impoverished and oppressed, and their work throughout Alabama and North Carolina. Also present are materials that document their actions during the volatile times leading up to “Bloody Sunday,” where they showed solidarity with those marching for civil rights in the 1960s, despite their bishop’s orders not to be involved in marching or other displays that could be interpreted as political or encouraging unrest.
As one of the Edmundites, Fr. Maurice Ouellet, SSE ’48 said of that time, “in that part
of Christ’s Body called Selma, Alabama, I held the hand of the uncomfortable Christ, that of
a minister trembling with fear but bursting
with courage.”
The students also traveled to Selma over winter break, met and talked with Bishop of Detroit Most Rev. Moses Anderson, SSE ’53 and visited historic sites such as the Edmund Pettus Bridge as well as a number of museums offering different interpretations of the civil rights movement. In addition to being inspired by the places and makers of history, they’ve learned about the Edmundites whose names are on campus landmarks but with whose work they were unfamiliar. They’ve read letters from Fr. Alliot and Fr. Dupont, learned how Fr. Nicolle came to send the first Edmundites to Selma to minister to the African-American community. “And they were very struck by the continued poverty and a standard of living in Selma that is so different from what they have up until now known and taken for granted,” says Scott. “With this class we have been able to convey to students why civil rights work was important, and continues to be so.”
The photographs included here tell a small part of the large and important role that the Society of St. Edmund played in the era of American Civil Rights.
View the History of Hope slideshow.
