Opelousas’ Black History, Written and Lived
Holy Ghost Catholic Church Educated
African Americans During Segregation
February 26, 2015
by Cheryl Devall
The Daily World
The kind of open and hidden interracial tensions depicted in movies like “Selma” and “The Help” festered in Opelousas a half-century ago.
Discrimination — and efforts to end it — played out in the housing market, social relations, racially segregated newspaper coverage and the schools, public and private.
While laws and customs have changed in the decades since, memories linger for some Opelousans who lived through those times.
Just as people of different races attended Holy Ghost Catholic Church just down Union Street from the landmark St. Landry Catholic Church, Opelousans of different races educated their children at separate schools back then.
“Only the graveyard separated us,” recalled Etha Simien Amling, 69, who attended the black Catholic school from kindergarten until her high school graduation in 1963.
“We would be in the schoolyard at Holy Ghost and the white kids at Academy of the Immaculate Conception would walk past and curse at us,” she said.
“We could not go in St. Landry Catholic Church,” Amling continued. “We knew we were not allowed. We had our church and they had their church. That’s just the way it was.
“The only time the two Catholic schools came together was for the Christ the King celebration” — a public rosary staged each year in Grand Coteau — “and the May crowning of the Blessed Mother,” she said.
She shared some of her memories to draw attention to a nonfiction book, “The Serpent and the Dove,” by a priest who worked at Holy Ghost for 10 years in the 1950s and ’60s.
The Rev. Francis Joseph Kichak’s religious order assigned him to the congregation as an assistant pastor after his ordination to the priesthood in 1954.
The book, published in 1975 and now out of print, begins with a chilling account of two black convicts’ electrocution at the St. Landry Parish Jail in 1949, and the white crowd that gathered outside to cheer. It went on to catalog the indignities large and small that African Americans faced at the time.
With name changes for some people and places — Opelousas, for example, is “Attakapa” in the book — Kichak also described his two jobs: religious ministry in public and activism in secret. The second task he shared with a small group of concerned citizens, black and white, who organized boycotts of St. Landry Parish businesses based on their practice of enforcing racial segregation on levels ranging from employment, customer service and accommodation in restaurants and movie theaters.
With secretly distributed fliers, letters to the editor of the Daily World and alliances with longer-established civil rights organizations, the group also worked to desegregate Catholic education in St. Landry Parish.
Although some readers may criticize its use of fake names, Amling defends the book. “It tells the real story. A lot of it I didn’t even know until I read the book.
“What reason would Father have to lie?” she continued. “This man went to battle for us.”
She added that the white Holy Ghost priests and the black Sisters of the Divine Word who worked at the church and school “were our pillar. I guess they didn’t realize how much we depended on them.”
While in most places outside their homes African Americans had to abide by codes of conduct that kept them separate and unequal with whites, the Catholic parish felt like a safe haven, Amling said. “I only know of happy times at school.”
She and other students were aware of racial discrimination, she said, “and we wondered why and asked the sisters, ‘Why do they (white people) hate us?’
“They would answer, ‘They don’t know. They don’t really hate us, they’re afraid of us. Hate comes from fear. Pray for them.’”
Sometimes at the risk of scolding from his superiors, Kichak not only prayed for hostile whites, but stood up to them. In 1966 he left Holy Ghost to work in Puerto Rico with his religious order, before social changes, law and economic reality led to the gradual end of Catholic school segregation in Opelousas.
At first, Holy Ghost operated as an integrated elementary school and the Academy of the Immaculate Conception became the Catholic high school. By the mid-1970s, the two schools combined to form the K-12 Opelousas Catholic School, open to students of all races.
By that time, Amling had left the city to see the world. She became a flight attendant for Pan Am, the now-defunct international airline that symbolized jet-set elegance and luxury. Her nieces attended Opelousas Catholic, and after years away she returned home.
These days she works as the activities director at Prompt Succor Nursing Home. Amling is also a family historian who has written a book about the long Simien lineage in St. Landry Parish.
She would like to see Kichak’s “The Serpent and the Dove” back in print with a new foreword to describe some of the ways Opelousas has changed in the last 50 years.
Amling has not spoken with the now-retired priest, her religion teacher at Holy Ghost, in many years. But “whenever the conversation is about Opelousas race relations, his name comes up,” she said. Just as he once told parishioners that they would recognize themselves in the book, she believes that Kichak’s story could speak to people who remember segregation and the generations born since.
“He would tell us all the time, ‘Work hard, a change will come,’” Amling said. “We were young. We really didn’t believe him.”
But much of what he predicted came true. Along with a well-loved copy of the book, Amling keeps a note he wrote to her on Holy Ghost stationery upon her graduation from high school.
“Congratulations!” it read. “Be a credit to your church and school. May the Holy Spirit be with you and yours.”
About Kichak and the nuns, Amling said, “They were our rock. They gave us courage. They gave us love and they softened a lot of the blows.”
Holy Ghost Catholic Church Educated
African Americans During Segregation
February 26, 2015
by Cheryl Devall
The Daily World
 |
| Etha Simien Amling attended the black Catholic school (Holy Ghost) from kindergarten until her high school graduation in 1963. |
Discrimination — and efforts to end it — played out in the housing market, social relations, racially segregated newspaper coverage and the schools, public and private.
While laws and customs have changed in the decades since, memories linger for some Opelousans who lived through those times.
Just as people of different races attended Holy Ghost Catholic Church just down Union Street from the landmark St. Landry Catholic Church, Opelousans of different races educated their children at separate schools back then.
“Only the graveyard separated us,” recalled Etha Simien Amling, 69, who attended the black Catholic school from kindergarten until her high school graduation in 1963.
“We would be in the schoolyard at Holy Ghost and the white kids at Academy of the Immaculate Conception would walk past and curse at us,” she said.
“We could not go in St. Landry Catholic Church,” Amling continued. “We knew we were not allowed. We had our church and they had their church. That’s just the way it was.
“The only time the two Catholic schools came together was for the Christ the King celebration” — a public rosary staged each year in Grand Coteau — “and the May crowning of the Blessed Mother,” she said.
She shared some of her memories to draw attention to a nonfiction book, “The Serpent and the Dove,” by a priest who worked at Holy Ghost for 10 years in the 1950s and ’60s.
The Rev. Francis Joseph Kichak’s religious order assigned him to the congregation as an assistant pastor after his ordination to the priesthood in 1954.
The book, published in 1975 and now out of print, begins with a chilling account of two black convicts’ electrocution at the St. Landry Parish Jail in 1949, and the white crowd that gathered outside to cheer. It went on to catalog the indignities large and small that African Americans faced at the time.
With name changes for some people and places — Opelousas, for example, is “Attakapa” in the book — Kichak also described his two jobs: religious ministry in public and activism in secret. The second task he shared with a small group of concerned citizens, black and white, who organized boycotts of St. Landry Parish businesses based on their practice of enforcing racial segregation on levels ranging from employment, customer service and accommodation in restaurants and movie theaters.
With secretly distributed fliers, letters to the editor of the Daily World and alliances with longer-established civil rights organizations, the group also worked to desegregate Catholic education in St. Landry Parish.
Although some readers may criticize its use of fake names, Amling defends the book. “It tells the real story. A lot of it I didn’t even know until I read the book.
“What reason would Father have to lie?” she continued. “This man went to battle for us.”
She added that the white Holy Ghost priests and the black Sisters of the Divine Word who worked at the church and school “were our pillar. I guess they didn’t realize how much we depended on them.”
While in most places outside their homes African Americans had to abide by codes of conduct that kept them separate and unequal with whites, the Catholic parish felt like a safe haven, Amling said. “I only know of happy times at school.”
She and other students were aware of racial discrimination, she said, “and we wondered why and asked the sisters, ‘Why do they (white people) hate us?’
“They would answer, ‘They don’t know. They don’t really hate us, they’re afraid of us. Hate comes from fear. Pray for them.’”
Sometimes at the risk of scolding from his superiors, Kichak not only prayed for hostile whites, but stood up to them. In 1966 he left Holy Ghost to work in Puerto Rico with his religious order, before social changes, law and economic reality led to the gradual end of Catholic school segregation in Opelousas.
At first, Holy Ghost operated as an integrated elementary school and the Academy of the Immaculate Conception became the Catholic high school. By the mid-1970s, the two schools combined to form the K-12 Opelousas Catholic School, open to students of all races.
By that time, Amling had left the city to see the world. She became a flight attendant for Pan Am, the now-defunct international airline that symbolized jet-set elegance and luxury. Her nieces attended Opelousas Catholic, and after years away she returned home.
These days she works as the activities director at Prompt Succor Nursing Home. Amling is also a family historian who has written a book about the long Simien lineage in St. Landry Parish.
She would like to see Kichak’s “The Serpent and the Dove” back in print with a new foreword to describe some of the ways Opelousas has changed in the last 50 years.
Amling has not spoken with the now-retired priest, her religion teacher at Holy Ghost, in many years. But “whenever the conversation is about Opelousas race relations, his name comes up,” she said. Just as he once told parishioners that they would recognize themselves in the book, she believes that Kichak’s story could speak to people who remember segregation and the generations born since.
“He would tell us all the time, ‘Work hard, a change will come,’” Amling said. “We were young. We really didn’t believe him.”
But much of what he predicted came true. Along with a well-loved copy of the book, Amling keeps a note he wrote to her on Holy Ghost stationery upon her graduation from high school.
“Congratulations!” it read. “Be a credit to your church and school. May the Holy Spirit be with you and yours.”
About Kichak and the nuns, Amling said, “They were our rock. They gave us courage. They gave us love and they softened a lot of the blows.”
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