School for Negroes

For a solid year, Father Joseph V. Rhodes, 37, of Paducah, Ky. has been pitching in with lathe, level, and paintbrush to help build a new parochial school. Last week classes began in Rosary Chapel School, a three-story brick building containing six classrooms and eight grades, living quarters for four Ursuline teacher-nuns, a cafeteria, and a basement auditorium seating about 200. But the statistic Father Rhodes was truly proud of was the enrollment: 150 Negro pupils.

Located in the middle of a Negro neighborhood. Rosary draws students from Pa-ducah's entire Negro community. Five years ago. when Rosary first started in a modest private residence, there were not more than ten Negro Catholics in Paducah (pop. 32,828); today there are about 85. In the first batch of 30 pupils, not one was a Catholic; of today's 150, some 40 are Catholic. Most of them became converts at Rosary.

Father Rhodes does not attribute this growth to aggressive proselytizing.Though daily Mass and doctrinal instruction are compulsory at Rosary, the emphasis is on running a better school than the segregated public schools available to Negroes. "[The pupils] are very eager to come here," says Father Rhodes. "The parents are as eager for them to come."

With a tuition of $1 per month per student, Rosary is hardly selfsupporting. Despite local contributions, nearly the full $87,000 cost of the new building had to be met from outside funds. Chief source of these funds is a near $1,000,000 earmarked last year by the church for "Catholic Missions Among the Colored People and the Indians." Such funds have been funneled mainly into school construction. Result: in the U.S. there are now 329 Catholic elementary schools for Negroes, most of them in the South, teaching 72,554 pupils.

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