On June 23rd, 1965, when Father Raymond N. Ellis was appointed to St. Cecilia's, the shift from a white to a predominantly black neighborhood was taking place in the parish. Moves to the suburbs by many parishioners, coupled with highway construction (still in progress in 1971!) which demolishes many homes, contributed to a decline in the number of communicants at St. Cecilia's Church. Worn facilities cried out for repair - costly repairs which Father Ellis found would deplete the funds of the parish. He bent his first efforts, nevertheless, towards restoring the smooth physical functioning of the parish.
RACIAL
FERMENT AND UNREST
The times were beset with ferment, unrest and strife - the Watts riot in Los Angeles was to cost thirty lives in August and the Detroit riot was two Summers away, in which at the conclusion of 5 days of rioting, 43 people lay dead, 1189 injured and over 7000 people had been arrested. Father Ellis found crime, vandalism, racial friction, and despair in his changing neighborhood.
The rise and tragic death of John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic president, had left its mark on the country's heart. President Johnson, elected the previous November, had delivered his Great Society message to Congress in January; the next month the United States had bombed North Vietnam. In the same month, on February 21st, Malcolm X was shot to death as he addressed his Afro-American Unity organization in New York.
ECUMENISM
Greet one another with a holy kiss. Grace be to all who are in Christ. 1 Peter, 5: 14
But as Father Ellis moved into St. Cecilia's Rectory, at least on the official level ecumenism at that time was cutting across the boundaries of race, religion, and nationality. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and conferred with Pope Paul VI in 1964. The pontiff himself had completed trips to the Holy Land and India and planned a third to the United Nations. Archbishop of Detroit, John Francis Dearden, in the face of racial tensions, had organized the Archbishop's Committee on Human Relations (just as, about thirty years before, at the time of the auto labor strife, Archbishop Mooney had fostered the work of the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists.)
Continued
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