St. Anthony Catholic Church
St. Anthony Catholic Church was built to serve the religious needs of Catholic people of color in the town of Natchitoches. The church also founded and administered St. Anthony’s Piegay School, where priests and nuns stressed education and equality. Even this church for people of color was subject to the pressures of Jim Crow and, at one time, had separate seating for Creoles and African Americans.
In 1945 … I remember when I came here, the first thing I wanted to find was a Catholic church, and somebody directed me to St. Anthony’s. I went to St. Anthony’s that Sunday morning and I wrote my mama that evening. I said, ‘Mama, I found me a church,’ I said, ‘and there’s a man who stands at the door and he check your hair and your color,’ I said, ‘and I just did make it in….’ You see where I sit now? That’s where I had to sit when I first came here. You didn’t go up front. You didn’t see a dark face. It’s changed though…. You look at it now, it’s so much different.
Old St. Anthony Church, ca. 1955, Urbach Collection, Box 5, 1955, CHRC
New St. Anthony Church, 2007: Dayna Bowker Lee
Piegay School, 1999: Sheila Richmond
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