Today In Black History: June 10

June 10, 1854 - James Augustine Healy, first African American Roman Catholic bishop is ordained.

James Augustine Healy, the first Roman Catholic priest of mixed origin in America, and the first non-white American to become a Catholic bishop, also received aid and encouragement from a white father.

Born in Georgia in 1830 to an Irish planter and a slave, Healy was carried north in 1837 and enrooled in a Qyaker school in Flushing, Long Island. He graduated from Holy Cross College in 1849 and was ordained a priest in 1854 at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Returning to America, healy worked his way up the hierarchy and was named bishop of Portland, Maine, in February, 1875.