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"Who Will Teach The Poor Little Ones To Say Their Prayers?" Catholics, Protestant, And Black Education In Reconstruction Era St. Augustine, Florida., Justin Stuart

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 1968, the doors of St. Benedict the Moor’s school in St. Augustine, Florida, closed after nearly seventy years of service to members of the city’s African American community. But St. Benedict’s school represented a long tradition of black Catholic education in St. Augustine. Under Spanish rule, a boy’s school existed that offered equal education to blacks and whites. Florida’s possession by the United States complicated matters as territorial and state laws ended black education in the city, and the Catholic Church chose to side with the South over the issue of slavery in the United States. With the town’s …