West Virginia diocese celebrates legacy of former Catholic school for African American students

By Colleen Rowan, OSV News

WHEELING, W.Va. (OSV News) -- Catholic leaders, community leaders, former students and members of the community gathered inside Central Catholic High School's gym in Wheeling to celebrate the history of the former Blessed Martin de Porres Catholic School for African American boys and girls.

The gym stands on the site of the former school, which the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston opened in 1942. It was staffed by the Sisters of St. Joseph.

The school was named before St. Martin de Porres was canonized in 1962 by Pope John XXIII.

"This is one of those events that we've been able to witness how Black history turns into our history, which is American history, and it connects and affects each and every one of us," said Ron Scott, director of the Wheeling YWCA's cultural diversity and community outreach.

"This ceremony wasn't born from complaints. There weren't protests and demonstrations demanding this happen. This is happening right now because it's the right thing to do and it's long overdue," he said.

Held just a week before the beginning of Black History Month, observed every February, the Jan. 24 ceremony included the blessing and dedication of a new statue of St. Martin de Porres, a replica of the statue that stood in Blessed Martin School 80 years ago.

The new statue, from the Diocese of Pittsburgh, has a permanent place at the entrance of the gym with a plaque on the wall beside it depicting an image of the school and a brief history.

The purchase and restoration of the statue was funded by the West Virginia Catholic Foundation through a grant directed by Bishop Mark E. Brennan of Wheeling-Charleston, who was joined at the ceremony by officials from the diocese and Central Catholic High School.

Before blessing the statue, Bishop Brennan spoke of growing up in segregated Maryland and knowing, even as a boy, that this was wrong. He also recalled getting involved in the civil rights movement in college.

"It is really just a joy to be able to be here with you" for the ceremony, the bishop said.

He spoke about St. Martin de Porres and his life. He was born in Lima, Peru Dec. 9, 1579. He was the illegitimate son of a Spanish gentlemen and a freed slave from Panama, of African or possibly Indigenous descent. A Dominican lay brother, he also experienced ridicule for being of mixed race.

In naming the school for Blessed Martin, Bishop Brennan told the crowd, the diocese chose a man who would "inspire students who would study here to know that they mattered as this man mattered."

Central Catholic High's principal, Becky Sancomb, said the school was proud to share a "very special history" with Blessed Martin School and East Wheeling."

She announced that five Central Catholic students took first place in the state's Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Committee -- Five-Minute Film Competition with a video highlighting Harry H. Jones, Wheeling's only practicing African American lawyer in 1936 and his "Wheeling's Twentieth Man" speech on WWVA Radio.

The "Twentieth Man" referred to the fact that African Americans made up 20% of Wheeling's population at the time. The students' video was then played on the jumbo screen.

In his remarks to the gathering, Tim Bishop, director of marketing and communications for the diocese, said, "We stand in this gym tonight as we have for so many years on the site of an important piece of history not only for members of the African American community but surely for the city itself."

The "Twentieth Man" speech, Bishop continued, "began a long difficult process of transforming our city for members of the African American community."

In a column he wrote 10 years after his radio address, Jones commended the leadership of Archbishop John J. Swint, then head of the statewide diocese, noting evangelization outreach to African Americans and the operation of Blessed Martin School.

Bishop recognized several people who were instrumental in the success of Blessed Martin School as well as those who secured its history, including the Sisters of St. Joseph, local library staff and diocesan staff and a local historian.

He also acknowledged "the men and women who called Blessed Martin home. Those students whose parents fought so hard so that they would receive an education when all others turned them away. We honor their hunger for knowledge and, like St. Martin de Porres, their desire for racial harmony. Our community is better with you in it."

The crowd included former students, like evangelist Ruth Stinson of Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Steubenville, Ohio.

"Blessed Martin is a blessed place," 81-year-old Stinson told the crowd. "You're standing on history, and we that have been here carry it in our hearts."

Following the ceremony, Stinson told The Catholic Spirit, the diocesan newspaper, that she was one of the first African American girls to attend St. Joseph's Academy in Wheeling after the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision banning segregation in public schools.

"They chose four of us from the school (Blessed Martin)," to attend St. Joseph's Academy, she said. This was the all-girls school operated by the diocese before the opening of Central Catholic.

"God got me through all of it," Stinson recalled. "Keep looking to the Lord. He will keep you in all things."