Photo By Michael Alexander

ATLANTA—The University of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism awarded its first Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., Prize to a history of Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Atlanta. 

The book project is titled, “In the Shadow of Ebenezer: A Black Catholic Parish in the Age of Civil Rights and Vatican II.”

The author Leah Mickens recently earned her doctorate from Boston University’s Graduate Program in Religion. Her project focuses on the city’s oldest historically Black parish, located one block from Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. served as co-pastor. Dr. Mickens examined how Black Catholics at Our Lady of Lourdes influenced and were influenced by the religious and social change ushered in by the Second Vatican Council and the civil rights movement.

The Cushwa Center, with the Davis Prize, recognizes outstanding works in progress on the Black Catholic experience. The prize honors Father Cyprian Davis, O.S.B. (1930–2015), a Benedictine monk, and his groundbreaking book, “The History of Black Catholics in the United States.”