• The Marching PriestThe Civil Rights and Labor Activism of Father Sherrill Smith during the 1950s and 1960s
• Mark Newman (bio)

Father Sherrill Smith of San Antonio holds a Saturday Evening Post from 1965 featuring a photo of him in the Selma-to-Montgomery march. ©Morris Goen/San Antonio Express-News via ZUMA Press.

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In 1961, Father Sherrill Smith, the assistant pastor of St. Joseph Church in the city of San Antonio, became the first Catholic priest based in the South to participate in a direct-action civil rights protest when he joined the stand-ins at San Antonio's Majestic Theater, which confined African American customers to an upstairs balcony. For Smith, the denial of civil rights to African Americans was a "moral and religious" issue he felt compelled to address when the movement called for assistance.¹

Four years later, Smith was one of hundreds of mainly White clergy and laity from many denominations who responded to Martin Luther King Jr.'s appeal for their participation in the demonstrations at Selma, Alabama, for African American voting rights. The Selma protests marked the first time that a large number of Catholic priests and sisters had joined a direct-action civil rights protest in the South, where Catholic dioceses struggled with varying degrees of commitment and success to overturn decades of segregation in their institutions. Only a handful of the more than 250 sisters and Catholic clergy who marched in Selma were based in the South. Smith was only one of thirty-six White people, and one of only two Catholic priests, whom civil rights organizers permitted to walk the entire fifty-four-mile route of the Selma-to-Montgomery march that marked the climax of the Alabama protests. His experience in Selma made Smith more militant and outspoken. In 1966, he helped mediate during James [End Page 301] Meredith's March against Fear in Mississippi, and he endorsed the idea of Black Power.²

Father Smith's fight against racial injustice was not confined solely to discrimination against African Americans in the Deep South, however. In addition to opposing discrimination against African Americans, he supported the Mexican American civil rights movement. The same sense of morality that took him to the Majestic Theater, Selma, and Mississippi had earlier impelled him to support a Hispanic labor protest in the late 1950s and also informed his subsequent labor activism in the second half of the 1960s and the early 1970s. As the first Catholic priest to participate in labor and civil rights direct action in Texas and the South, Smith was an important part of a wider, yet underestimated, Catholic contribution to civil rights and labor struggles in the South.³

Smith's labor and civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s has not received sufficient attention from scholars of Catholicism, civil rights, or Texas history. Smith does not appear in Martin Herman Kuhlman's dissertation on desegregation in Texas. Robert A. Goldberg's study of racial change in San Antonio between 1960 and 1965 only mentions Smith briefly. Saul E. Bronder's biography of Archbishop Robert E. Lucey, who initially supported Smith but clashed with him in later years, discusses Smith's deteriorating relationship with his superior. More recently, Brian D. Behnken's account of the civil rights struggle in Texas acknowledges some of Smith's activism but considers him chiefly regarding Project Equality, an interdenominational program that sought to promote nondiscriminatory hiring by businesses and the Church. Max Krochmal's study of multiracial coalition building in civil rights era Texas mentions Smith briefly on three occasions. Smith contributed to both labor and civil rights struggles, but as an Anglo and a priest who saw his role mostly as supporting these struggles when called upon by those involved.⁴ [End Page 302]

Some scholars, such as Amy L. Koehlinger and John T. McGreevy, have stressed the importance of the Second Vatican Council in encouraging Catholic participation in the civil rights movement. The council, which met in Rome between 1962 and 1965, emphasized the duty of the Church to engage with the problems of...

• 行进的牧师1950年代和1960年代的谢里尔·史密斯神父的公民权利和劳工行动主义
• 马克·纽曼（生物）

圣安东尼奥的父亲谢里尔·史密斯（Sherrill Smith）担任1965年的《星期六晚间邮报》，其中有他在塞尔玛到蒙哥马利游行中的照片。©莫里斯Goen /通过ZUMA按圣安东尼奥快报。

[完第300页]

我ñ1961年，F粥小号herrill小号MITH，助理牧师小号吨。Ĵ oseph教会在圣安东尼奥市，成为总部设在南方的第一个天主教牧师参加直接行动民权抗议时，他加入了替身，在圣安东尼奥的大剧院，这限制非裔美国人的客户楼上阳台。对于史密斯来说，剥夺非裔美国人的公民权利是一个“道德和宗教”问题，当运动要求援助时，他感到不得不解决。^1个

四年后，史密斯成为许多教派中数百位主要由白人组成的牧师之一，他们回应了小马丁·路德·金的呼吁，要求他们参加在阿拉巴马州塞尔玛举行的示威游行，以争取非洲裔美国人的投票权。塞尔玛抗议活动标志着一大批天主教神父和姐妹第一次参加了南部的直接行动民权抗议活动，在那里，天主教教区在不同程度的承诺和成功斗争中颠覆了其机构中数十年的隔离。在塞尔玛游行的250多个姐妹和天主教神职人员中，只有少数人居住在南部。史密斯只是36位白人中的一位，也是仅有的两名天主教神父之一，公民权利组织者允许他们走完从塞尔玛到蒙哥马利的整个54英里长的路线，这标志着阿拉巴马州抗议活动的高潮。他在塞尔玛（Selma）的经历使史密斯变得更加好战和直言不讳。1966年，他协助詹姆斯进行调解[完301页]梅雷迪思在密西西比州举行的反对恐惧游行，他赞同黑人权力的构想。^2个

但是，史密斯神父对种族歧视的斗争并不仅仅局限于歧视深南地区的非洲裔美国人。除了反对歧视非裔美国人外，他还支持墨西哥裔美国人的民权运动。带他到雄伟的剧院，塞尔玛和密西西比州的道德感早些时候促使他支持1950年代后期的西班牙裔劳工抗议活动，并在随后的1960年代后半期和1970年代初为工人激进主义提供了信息。史密斯是得克萨斯州和南方地区第一位参与劳工和民权直接行动的天主教神父，是天主教对南方公民权利和劳工斗争做出的广泛但却被低估的重要组成部分。³

史密斯（Smith）在1950年代和1960年代的劳动和民权活动主义并未受到天主教，民权或得克萨斯历史学者的足够重视。史密斯并未出现在马丁·赫尔曼·库尔曼（Martin Herman Kuhlman）关于德克萨斯州反种族隔离的论文中。罗伯特·戈德堡（Robert A. Goldberg）对1960年至1965年圣安东尼奥种族变化的研究仅提及史密斯。索尔·布朗德（Saul E. Bronder）的罗伯特·E·露西大主教的传记最初支持史密斯，但后来与他发生冲突，他讨论了史密斯与上级之间日益恶化的关系。最近，布莱恩·D·贝肯（Brian D. Behnken）对得克萨斯州民权斗争的论述承认史密斯的某些激进主义，但主要考虑到他是关于项目平等的计划，该计划是一个旨在促进企业和教会进行非歧视性雇用的跨种族计划。麦克斯·克罗赫马尔（Max Krochmal）在德克萨斯州民权时代对多种族联盟建设的研究中，曾三度简要提及史密斯。史密斯为劳动和民权斗争做出了贡献，但作为一名盎格鲁和牧师，当相关人员呼吁时，他主要将他的角色看作是支持这些斗争的角色。⁴ [结束页302]

一些学者，例如艾米·科林格（Amy L. Koehlinger）和约翰·麦格里维（John T. McGreevy），都强调了梵蒂冈第二委员会在鼓励天主教徒参与民权运动中的重要性。该理事会于1962年至1965年在罗马举行会议，强调教会有责任解决...