The renowned Attorney Donald V. Watkins gave permission to share his powerful essay about the situation at St. Jude with those who have signed our petition urging that the institution be kept open. His thought-provoking essay, which is reprinted below, puts the situation in a global context and urges the Pope and the Vatican to recognize what is at stake. The Death of St. Jude Educational Institute By Donald V. Watkins ©Copyrighted and Published (via Facebook) on June 30, 2014 When the 2013-14 school year ended in May, St. Jude Educational Institute closed its doors as a historic educational institution for African-Americans in Montgomery, Alabama. Opened in 1946, St. Jude was a private, Roman Catholic high school in Montgomery. It is located in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mobile, and was built as "the City of St. Jude" by Father Harold Purcell for the advancement of the “Negro people”. St. Jude offered a full college preparatory program as well as basic skills and trade programs at night for adults. During the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965, the marchers camped on St. Jude's campus. The "Stars for Freedom" rally, featuring singers Harry Belafonte, Peter, Paul and Mary, Tony Bennett, and comedian Sammy Davis Jr. was held at St. Jude. The campus was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, and is part of the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail, created in 1996. The City of St. Jude was originally comprised of a hospital, which has since closed, a center for disabled and mentally impaired children, which remains open, a cathedral, which is still active, and the Educational Institute, which was closed in May by the Archdiocese. St. Jude was a mecca for intellectual, civic, and spiritual growth on Montgomery’s West side. Its alumni left the Institute and accomplished remarkable success in mainstream America. The Institute’s positive impact on the fabric of American life has been felt for over six decades. At times when despair and soul searching occurred within the black community, St. Jude served as a beacon of hope and a repository of much-needed character-building values for the black community. Since 1946, St. Jude has defined the true character and spirit of African-Americans and what we can achieve in the larger world if given a high quality education and a meaningful opportunity to succeed in America. Two things struck me about the death of St. Jude. First, the Catholic Church was a full and knowing participant in the racially segregated “separate, but equal” society operating throughout the South during the 20th Century. The City of St. Jude was created to keep blacks from attending white Catholic churches, schools, care centers for impaired children, and hospitals in Montgomery. Rather than challenging this discriminatory practice in the South during the first half of the 20th Century, the Vatican condoned it. To my knowledge, the Catholic Church never apologized to its black members for its open complicity in the demeaning system of racial segregation in the South. The Church's decision to close St. Jude represents another affront to loyal Catholics of color who did not abandon the Church in spite of its complicity in racial discrimination. The closing adds insult to injury. The least the Church can do is support and perpetuate a proven beacon of light for its African-American members in Montgomery. This time the Church should view St. Jude as a valuable asset, not as a modern-day vestige of a racially segregated society. The Church, which spends vast sums of money on questionable pomp and circumstance during Vatican services and activities, owes it to Montgomery’s black community to financially underwrite St. Jude Educational Institute and to elevate its little-known but proven stature on the national scene. This is not an Archdiocese issue; this is a Vatican issue. The ultimate decision for the Catholic Church's participation in the South’s engrained and dehumanizing system of racial segregation and discrimination was made at the Vatican by a succession of Popes. This behavior was just as repugnant, offensive, and damaging from a psychological standpoint as the Church’s long history of child abuse and sexual molestation. The Vatican needs to reopen St. Jude for the upcoming school year. We do not need lip service, promises, or prayers on this issue. We need prompt action from the Catholic Church. Second, and perhaps saddest, the closing of St. Jude highlighted just how impotent our black political, business, and religious leaders are in Alabama and elsewhere. While they have important sounding titles, they lacked the collective juice necessary to keep St. Jude open. If they did not have the juice to keep a small school like St. Jude open, what will happen when the State of Alabama gets tired of funding Alabama State University and Alabama A&M University. The Tea Party-controlled government in Alabama is rapidly reaching this dangerous place. ASU almost lost 25% of its regular state funding during the 2014 Legislative session. In order to ingratiate herself to Governor Robert Bentley, ASU's new president naively agreed to this budget cut after only one month into her presidency. The money was restored to ASU’s appropriation only after an alert Representative, John Knight, blew the cover off this secret deal between the Governor, the Chairman of the Senate Education Finance Committee, and ASU's president. If our leadership cadre is too impotent to save one of our most treasured educational institutions from extinction, on whom can we depend? We must depend on ourselves. We must tell our leaders in strong and clear language that we are tired of receiving commemorative plaques and awards for events that happened 50 and 60 years ago. We must now demand that they aggressively fight against today’s systematic erosion of the hard-earned civil rights gains that were won with the blood, sweat, and tears of our forefathers/mothers. If this makes them "controversial" in the eyes of the Tea Party political establishment or the Church, so be it. If they are too weak to fight for us, they need to be replaced on the frontline of the battlefield for our survival. Nobody wants a tired sentinel who is afraid of a fight. It is not too late to save St. Jude. She may be dead today, but she can rise again in the morning. This time, we must perform the Biblical miracle of making St. Jude rise from the dead. This time, we must use the global power of Facebook and other social media outlets to let the Vatican know that the miracle of St. Jude is happening. The Church needs to be a part of this righteous cause. https://donaldvwatkins.wordpress.com/about/ http://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Donald_Watkins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Watkins