U.S. Catholic Special Collection, Roesch Library

The National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice was founded in 1959 to bring together local councils working on race issues in urban areas. The Catholic Clergy Conference on the Interracial Apostolate, formerly known as the Midwest Clergy Conference on Negro Welfare, reorganized in 1965 as a national organization. It was composed of both white and African American priests, vowed religious, nuns, and lay people who served urban, racially diverse populations. Before a 1968 conference of the CCCIA in Detroit, Father Herman Porter, S.C.J., convened a meeting of African American priests. The National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus was founded at this meeting, and Father Rollins Lambert was elected the president. The National Black Sisters Conference was founded in 1968, with their inaugural conference held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The founder and first president, Sister Martin de Porres Grey, R.S.M. (Patricia Grey Tyree), was the only religious sister to attend the NBCCC meeting, and felt that a similar group for vowed women religious was needed. The National Office for Black Catholics was founded in July of 1970. The NOBC was formed when the National Black Clergy Caucus, the National Black Sisters Conference, and the National Black Lay Catholic Caucus merged together with the approval of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Brother Joseph Davis, S.M., served as the executive director from 1970 through 1977. Many of the documents in this collection came from his personal papers in a transfer from the Marianist Archives.