For much of the twentieth century, Black Catholics in Detroit created something remarkable: vibrant, self-made communities that fused Black American culture with Catholic tradition. From the late 1960s on, they trained their own liturgical leaders, brought gospel and jazz music into the sanctuary, and made Detroit the radical center of the national Black Catholic Movement. 

But in 1989, the Archdiocese of Detroit announced the closing of dozens of churches—unprecedented in U.S. Catholic history at the time. Those church closures disproportionately affected Black parishes in the inner city. That event would permanently reshape Detroit’s religious landscape and become the model for urban parish consolidations across the country, which continue to this day.

The City and the Cross traces that arc, from the improvisational origins of Black Catholic churches in the early twentieth century and the creative ferment of the 1960–70s through the devastating closures of 1989 and into the present, when another wave of church closures is looming. 

This is a “hidden” chapter of American civil-rights history: the story of multiracial resistance movements, the long battle to find a spiritual home, and a community’s refusal to disappear even as it accuses the institutional Church of failing to invest in its future.

Click here to listen to episode 1, “From the Ground Up.” For more information about Commonweal’s Centennial Fellowship, click here.