Pickin’ Cotton on the Way to Church: The Life and Work of Father Boniface Hardin, OSB By Nancy Van Note Chism

Abstract

Pickin’ Cotton on the Way to Church is a story of the life and work of Father Boniface Hardin (1933–2012), a Benedictine priest committed to a life of service and witness at a time when Black Catholic clerics were extremely rare. Based largely on oral interviews with Hardin and around forty other people who knew him, it is also a story of the community he served, for his life was inextricably intertwined with the people he loved in Indianapolis. And while chronicling Hardin’s personal and political victories and defeats on behalf of the voiceless, Chism also documents how Hardin’s life and work forced American Catholicism to confront its own unpleasant racial history and practice.