Freedom and Light
The Martin Luther King Jr. Catholic Student Center at Southern University Baton Rouge
When you drive into the south gates of Southern University in Baton Rouge, you will notice a rather interesting white sculpture in the round.
There’s nothing saying what it is or who did it, but if you know about Frank Hayden, then you can figure out that he is behind it.
As you get closer, this cast stone sculpture comes to life. Hayden’s intentions, which he shared with a reporter when he created it in 1970, was to “suggest an unfolding or evolving organic structure which coils outward from the force of two massive hands seeking freedom and light”. This was Hayden’s first monument to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Done in the months after Dr. King’s assassination. The reporter adds that this monument to Dr. King “has a quiet movement to it, like a blossoming flower paralleling Dr. King’s feelings and sentiments of non-violence.”
The sign for the building where this sculpture sits reads the Martin Luther King Jr. Catholic Student Center, but it was known as the Newman Center up until 1984. A Newman Center is the name given to Catholic ministries at secular universities. It is a name that comes from Saint John Henry Newman, who was a reform-minded theologist, known as the “Invisible Father of the Second Vatican Council.” This Newman Center at Southern certainly embodies the progressive minded spirit of Saint Newman well.
The history of this center began in 1969 when Father Rawlin Enette persuaded Diocesan officials to build a church and student center on Southern University’s campus. Father Enette had come to Baton Rouge and the campus of Southern University in 1966 to serve as a campus Chaplain. He was coming from Washington D.C., where he had been since 1959 when he attended St. Joseph Seminary. Upon graduation, he was appointed to churches in Baltimore and then D.C. Father Enette became involved in the Civil Rights movement while there, marching with Dr. King in Washington D.C. in 1963 and also Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. In Baton Rouge, he became a vocal advocate for civil rights. Father Enette spoke at a rally at the Louisiana State Capitol following Dr. King’s murder, then in September 1969, a police shooting incident led Father Enette and others to speak out. At a councilman meeting on this issue, he warned them that “if police brutality did not end, young blacks would begin taking the law into their own hands.”
Father Enette was also the Associate Pastor at Frank Hayden’s church, Immaculate Conception, which was located a mile away. As Hayden was a devout Catholic, a friendship developed between the two and that is likely where seeds were planted for the creation of the Center. Catholic students had been “meeting in a courtroom of the law building” and Father Ernette recognized the need to have a building of their own for students. With the donation of land in the wooded southern edge of campus, the Diocese made the building a reality. It would be run by the Josephine Fathers, who were serving as missionaries in Scotlandville.
The center was designed for youth in mind. It was also an Ecumenical Church, which means it represents all Christian Churches throughout the world. The Center was very much aligned with black pride messages of the time, including having an alter cloth that reads “Dig your black self”. Hayden and his colleague, Van Chambers, created a number of lively pieces of liturgical art placed throughout the building. This art brings the center to life and collectively creates an interesting gallery of modern spiritual art.
By 1970, Hayden and Chambers were not new to liturgical art or art for the youth. Both had been mentored by Sister Lurana Neely at Xavier University of Louisiana in the 1950s. They also both studied at the University of Notre Dame and then studied in Munich. For Hayden and Chambers, art was an extension of their faith and an expression of the word of God. Being art professors at Southern’s Art Department connected them with a range of students and they were able to use this understanding when creating their art.
With the grand opening of the Newman Center in the spring of 1970, a bold step forward was taken for a campus that had been embroiled in turmoil for over a decade. During this time, Louisiana’s Southern University system, which included a campus in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Shreveport, was the largest Black University system in the country. As a result these campus became un-official centers for 1960s civil rights action. Unofficial in that the administration, and more so the old school Louisiana legislatures who controlled the purse strings of the University, were adamantly opposed to any such activity. This made the administration far from progressive and as movements of black power and black pride rose, the University forbid its students and faculty to nurture any such thing, or they would risk being expelled or fired.
This generated intense frustration with Dr. Felton Clark, who, between him and his father, had overseen Southern since the University moved to the Scotlandville campus in 1914. For all of the milestones and growth Dr. Clark had achieved, by the 1960s he was no longer aligned with where civil rights was at. Especially when the protest and violence of 1960 and 1961 in Baton Rouge brought the Civil Rights movement to the forefront on campus. Things only elevated throughout the decade. Eventually President Felton Clark retired in the fall of 1968 and so there was hope that the future of Southern University would be more aligned with its students and the world they were trying to create.
It would seem at the time that the Newman Center signaled that future. It did a lot of what students were asking for, which was to embrace black identity. In the end, it would remain an anomaly on campus. Father Enette would continue to nurture the Center for the next 13 years, before he was called to other communities. Fortunately his vision is still there and you can visit to experience the vibrant art that Frank Hayden created for it.
-Bennet Rhodes
Learn more at FrankHaydenProject.Org
Photography by Bennet Rhodes
Brought to you by Culture Candy, Baton Rouge
“We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right”
-Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
Postscript
There is another Newman Center in Louisiana built in 1967. Found on the campus of Grambling State University in North Louisiana, it also features an exterior sculpture by Frank Hayden.
Sources
Sunday Advocate. 27 September 1970. Writer Jan McDonald
https://diobr.org/st-joseph-chapel-martin-luther-king-jr-student-center-baton-rouge
www.brla.gov/DocumentCenter/View/10989/HL-2-21-Staff-Report
https://www.archgh.org/news-data/texas-catholic-herald/residence-welcomes-retired-priests/
josephite66.rssing.com/chan-54686269/all_p2.html
State Times. 10 September 1969
Scotlandville By Rachel L. Emanuel, Ph.D., Ruby Jean Simms, Ph.D., Charles Vincent, Ph.D.
My Face Is Black by C. Eric Lincoln
Desegregating Dixie: The Catholic Church in the South and Desegregation by Mark Newman
National Museum of African American History and Culture
https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/black-beautiful-emergence-black-culture-and-identity-60s-and-70s#:~:text=The%20phrase%20“black%20is%20beautiful,pride%20in%20contemporary%20black%20achievements.