On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man was murdered by white police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest Chauvin made after a store clerk suspected Floyd of using a counterfeit $20 bill.
Images of the police officer kneeling on the restrained man’s neck set off a series of protests across the United States and in several other countries.
In a statement after the incident, then-Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Washington lamented that images of the incident that were splayed in the media “clearly confirm that racism still endures in our country.”
Chauvin was found guilty of second- and third-degree murder and sentenced to more than 22 years in prison. Later, he pled guilty to federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights, and was sentenced to an additional 21 years in prison.
“This incident reveals the virus of racism among us once again...,” the future cardinal said in his statement. “Racism hurts all of us in the Body of Christ since we are each made in the image and likeness of God, and deserve the dignity that comes with that existence.”
The following month, then-Archbishop Gregory was among the Catholic bishops serving in Maryland who signed a letter calling for people of faith to take action to end racism.
“We call all people of good will to prayer, to root out any hatred and animosity that has taken hold in one’s own heart,” the bishops wrote.
Titled “Building Bridges of Understanding and Hope,” the letter was signed by then-Archbishop Gregory and the eight other bishops serving in the state of Maryland, including Washington Auxiliary Bishop Roy E. Campbell Jr., who also serves as the president of the National Black Catholic Congress.
In the letter, the bishops acknowledged “our own Church’s past sins and failings,” and said that “painful history” should “animate our prayers, thoughts and actions for an end, finally, to the sin of racism that remains with us and in us.”
Two months later, on Aug. 28, 2020, then-Archbishop Gregory celebrated a Mass of Peace and Justice marking the 57th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
“We are at a pivotal juncture in our country’s struggle for racial justice and national harmony,” Archbishop Gregory said. “Believers and nonbelievers, sports stars and corporate giants, small town residents and urban dwellers must all engage in the work of reconciliation and unity building so that our common future will be better and more secure than the past.”
To that end, Archbishop Gregory announced during the Mass an archdiocesan initiative to “fight against racial injustice everywhere.”
Titled “‘Made in God’s Image: Pray and Work to End the Sin of Racism,” the initiative has a website – https://adw.org/living-the-faith/our-cultures/anti-racism-initiative/ – that includes pastoral activities, listening sessions, faith formation opportunities, social justice work, reflection resources, links to the cardinal’s Masses, webinars that focus on racism, other information and prayers.
In his regular Catholic Standard column after announcing the initiative, then-Archbishop Gregory wrote, called it “an ongoing attempt to speak openly, candidly, and respectfully to one another.”
“The purpose of our efforts is to find a truly faith-filled response,” the then-archbishop wrote. “They are not intended to be blame sessions, but an honest examination of our history, our aspirations, and our reactions to this moment.”
The initiative, Cardinal Gregory said, would help “change our hearts.”
“To take down a granite statue of someone who was a Confederate hero, or someone whose political or social position encouraged segregation or discrimination, to take down those statues is important, it’s a step, but if we don’t change the human heart, all we’ve done is remove a granite statue while leaving our stony hearts unaffected,” he said.
While the “‘Made in God’s Image” initiative was created during Cardinal Gregory’s term as the archbishop of Washington, his dedication to fighting racism and helping the Church recognize the important contributions of Black Catholics dates back decades.
On Sept. 9, 1984, “What We Have Seen and Heard: A Pastoral Letter on Evangelization from the Black Bishops of the United States” was issued. In the pastoral, the bishops stressed that “as Black Americans and Black Catholics, it is time for us to reclaim our roots and to shoulder the responsibilities of being both Black and Catholic.”
Among the 10 bishops who coauthored “What We Have Seen and Heard,” the future cardinal archbishop of Washington was the youngest at 36 years of age. At the time, he was serving as an auxiliary bishop of Chicago.
While the letter focuses on evangelization, the bishops wrote that witnessing to the faith means “denouncing racism as a sin while fighting for justice and inner renewal.”
“The causes of justice and social concern are an essential part of evangelization. To preach to the powerful without denouncing oppression is to trivialize the Gospel,” the bishops said in that letter, adding, “As Black people we must have concern for those who hunger and thirst for justice throughout the world. We must not ignore those whom others tend to forget.”
At a Mass and luncheon on Oct. 17, 2024 to mark the 40th anniversary of the document’s publication, Cardinal Gregory spoke on the push-back and resistance from some who do not want the Church to teach about its racist past, and he said that the faithful must acknowledge that history of the Church in the United States.
“I don’t want them to feel bad, but I want them to know the truth because, as you know, ‘The truth shall set you free,’” he said.
In a 2021 interview with Al Roker for NBC’s TODAY show, Cardinal Gregory spoke of his own experiences of racism.
“I don’t know of any African American who hasn’t tasted the bitter cup of discrimination,” he explained. “Now as long as I was formally dressed, I’m treated with great respect and affection. But if I take off my clerics to go out, to go shopping or run an errand, I’m in the pool of every other African American man in Washington.”
Cardinal Gregory in that interview said, “It’s good for me to remember” incidents of racism that he has experienced, because “it’s good for me not to lose a grounding in the experience of what it means to be an African American man in our country.”
In 2023, Cardinal Gregory spoke of the newly designated Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Mississippi and Illinois.
“It is painful to recall yesterday’s violence, but it is necessary so that the lessons learned in tears will hopefully prevent us from such tragedies in the future,” he said.
In August 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American youth from Chicago, was visiting family in Mississippi when he was accused of making unjust advances toward a white female. Four days later, he was kidnapped and brutally murdered, and three days after his abduction, his mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River.
Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley held an open-casket viewing and funeral for her son in Chicago, where an estimated 125,000 people attended the visitation and funeral services. Emmett Till’s lynching helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement and inspired Rosa Parks’s activism.
Among those who filed past Emmett Till’s casket was Wilton Gregory, a native of Chicago who was then nearly 8 years old. He would later recall that “my grandmother took me to the wake. That was a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement.”
Cardinal Gregory said he remembered “the sense of hope and determination that the Civil Rights Movement engendered.”
“Those moments of tragedy… of the killing of Emmett Till, the assassination of those public figures, they didn’t break the spirit of the people of the time,” he said. “They saddened us deeply, but they didn’t break our spirits. And I hope that’s also the case of the young people in today’s world, which is so divided.”
The cardinal has called the fight against racism a calling for everybody because “racism blinds us to the beauty of others and often makes an idol of our own reflection.”
“Racial healing is an aspiration that will only be possible because of the ceaseless attention of all of people of good will who believe in the value and significance of living harmoniously in a multiracial, multicultural society,” he said in an April, 2021 address in Virginia, adding it is “not simply a gracious hope, it is the only way that our nation will continue to advance toward its own constitutional ideals.”
