RELIGION, RACISM, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DIGNITY

Around the Family Altar: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1865–1900. By Julius H. Bailey. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005. xii + 151 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $59.95 (cloth).

Black, White, and Catholic: New Orleans Interracialism, 1947–1956. By R. Bentley Anderson. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005. xix + 292 pp. Photographs, tables, notes, bibliography, appendix, and index. $45.00 (cloth).

Guadalupe and Her Faithful: Latino Catholics in San Antonio from Colonial Origins to the Present. By Timothy Matovina. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. xv + 232 pp. Photographs, illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $60.00 (cloth); $22.95 (paper).

Kathleen Garces-Foley
Marymount University

A common theme runs through these three books: religious people have been empowered and constrained by religious narratives, symbols, and rituals as they negotiate the racialized context of the United States. As familiar as this metanarrative has become in American religious history, it remains compelling for it is only in the particularities of this struggle that we come to understand the plasticity of religion and the strength of the human desire for dignity. Through vivid detail and compelling narrative these books chronicle the efforts of African Americans, Mexican Americans, and their White allies to make a place for themselves in a hostile society.