Mathew Ahmann '52 (far left), along with other chairmen, led the procession from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. More than 6,000 security officers were on duty in case of a riot, but marchers maintained peace.
Today, on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we reflect on his work and dedication and that of Saint John’s University graduate Mathew Ahmann ’52, an unsung hero of the Civil Rights Movement. This article originally appeared in the Summer/Fall 2013 edition of the Saint John’s Magazine.
Acting on Faith
The Civil Rights Legacy of Mathew Ahmann ’52
Fifty years have passed since Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” rang out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and galvanized a nation. Mathew Ahmann ’52 spurred Catholics to help make the dream a reality.
By Brendon Duffy, SOT ’02
On a mild summer day 58 years ago, more than 250,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C. for what has been called the greatest demonstration for freedom in the nation’s history. Participants poured into the city by plane, car and bus. They were Hollywood stars, factory workers and Sunday school teachers.
Surrounded by a massive police presence, and with recently televised images of police brutality in their minds, marchers carried signs from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial to a chorus of “We Shall Overcome.” They marched for civil rights legislation, desegregation in schools and economic equality.
They were in and out of Washington in just a few hours, achieving one of the most peaceful protests in American history—the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
The lone Catholic chairman and a voice from the podium that day was a 31-year-old, bow-tied, mild-mannered Johnnie named Mathew Ahmann. This young man may be one of the least known but most important figures in the history of Catholic support for the civil rights movement in the 60s.
By the late 1950s, shocking stories of civil rights struggles had become regular evening news fare. For some, racial injustice was a daily reality. For others, it seemed isolated to the South. As laws and restrictions changed, however, Southern Blacks migrated North—especially to large cities—in hopes of new opportunities. These demographic changes brought civil rights issues out of Midwestern television sets and into churches, neighborhoods and families.
Mathew Ahmann, serving as a field representative for the Catholic Interracial Council (CIC) in Chicago at the time, watched the growing civil rights movement and thought the the Catholic Church could—and should—help.
Ahmann was appointed the founding director of the National Catholic Council for Interracial Justice (NCCIJ) in 1960. One of his first major tasks was to initiate the first national meeting on civil rights of the three major faith groups. Until then, Catholic leaders had been relatively quiet on the subject. Ahmann urged bishops to get involved. “In the North,” Ahmann told the Saint John’s Magazine in a 1963 interview, “the culture of many large cities has been heavily shaped by Roman Catholics and their institutions. No large northern city will seriously tackle problems of segregation in housing, for example, if Catholics and Catholic dioceses do not earnestly tackle them.”
Faith Groups Convene
The National Conference on Religion and Race took place on January 14-17, 1963 in Chicago, and 657 attendees represented 78 denominations and church organizations. The conference opened with a read statement from President John F. Kennedy and speakers included Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., R. Sargent Shriver and Rabbi Abraham Heschel, one of the nation’s preeminent Jewish theologians. At the conclusion of his speech, Rabbi Heschel said, “We are here because of the faith of a 33-year-old Catholic layman. I want him to come to the stage.” When Ahmann reached the stage, Heschel pulled Ahmann’s head down and kissed him on the head, provoking the audience to rise in applause.
“Matt’s work brought the Catholic Church out of its shell on civil rights issues,” said Jerry Ernst, who worked for the NCCIJ and later worked with Ahmann at Catholic Charities USA. “His thoughtful, methodical, action-oriented method changed the way the church operated on these issues. It opened up the church.”
Mathew Ahmann '52 organized the National Conference on Religion and Race in 1963 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. That year, he edited Race: Challenge to Religion, a collection of essays from the conference. The volume won the National Mass Media Brotherhood Book Award from the National Council of Christians and Jews. [Photo courtesy of Ahmann family.]
Plans were already under way for a march to promote civil rights legislation the following August. Organizers approached Ahmann, as executive director of the NCCIJ, to get a bishop to serve as one of the chairmen. Despite Ahmann’s attempts, no bishop was willing to be on the ten-person committee and have his name attached to the platform. Ahmann stepped up as the Catholic presence both on the organizing committee and as a speaker for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Ahmann’s speech, just minutes before King’s, called Catholics to action. “We are gathered,” he said, “to dedicate ourselves to building a people, a nation, a world which is free of the sin of discrimination based on race, creed, color or national origin, a world of the sons of God, equal in all important respects; a world dedicated to justice, and to fraternal bonds between men. I am a Catholic. These are goals the Catholic community shares with all other Americans. As Catholics fought for their own rights as citizens, they now fight for the rights of Negroes and other minorities.”
Ahmann had eventually succeeded in getting Fr. Patrick O’Boyle, the Archbishop of Washington, to offer the invocation at the march. In addition to Archbishop O’Boyle, five bishops, one archbishop and numerous priests and nuns attended. “Matt was instrumental in bringing the larger Catholic community into the civil rights movement,” says Ernst.
First Steps
Ahmann’s journey to the podium of the March on Washington and into the heart of the civil rights movement started in what many would consider an unlikely place—the northern, predominantly white community of St. Cloud, Minn.
Ahmann’s grandfather, German immigrant Mathew Hall, was a pioneer St. Cloud businessman. His grandparents nurtured a large, fun-loving family who believed in education and hard work. Although Matt encountered few Jews or Blacks growing up in Stearns County, he was very well read. Relatives and classmates alike say that he would read anything he could get his hands on.
Mathew Ahmann '52 (top left) was one of the chairmen of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The roster was a who’s who of the civil rights movement and included ministers and civic and labor leaders.
A family story illustrates his early sensitivity to social justice. At one of many family gatherings, Matt’s aunt brought a young Jewish woman from Europe as a guest. When his cousins made anti-Semitic jokes, oblivious to how this might affect their guest, Matt jumped to her defense and told his cousins to stop. “Anti-Semitism really bothered Matt,” says Margaret Ahmann, his widow. “And that woman kept in contact with Matt for the rest of his life.”
“He was very bright, very sensitive and in tune with other people,” says his oldest daughter, Liz Ahmann. “He had a strong sense of justice internally. I think that combined with faith and where Catholicism was at the time pulled a lot of pieces together for him.”
Matt graduated from Saint John’s in three years with a social science major. He was greatly influenced by Emerson Hynes, an SJU sociology professor, and his wife Arleen, intellectuals who were committed to social justice. They raised ten children in Collegeville, and their home was a gathering place for thought and debate. At Hynes’ encouragement, Ahmann pursued graduate studies in sociology at the University of Chicago. “I think he may have liked to have a life like Hynes, being either an attorney or a professor,” says Margaret, “but he was always called to service.”
Margaret Ahmann credits Saint John’s and the Benedictines with igniting Matt’s lifelong passion for social justice. Trained in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, surrounded by liturgical reform and serving in student social justice organizations such as Young Christian Students (YCS) put Ahmann’s ideas into action.
Margaret Ahmann remembers a time in their young married life in Chicago when Ahmann wanted to offer their apartment to good friends and newly married interracial couple Al and Betty Miller for a honeymoon weekend. Like the Ahmanns, the Millers didn’t have a lot of money. Interracial marriage was controversial at the time, and Margaret was worried. Their landlady had voiced strong racist views, and Margaret was afraid both that the newlyweds might face hurtful confrontation and that the Ahmanns could lose their apartment. “To Matt, that wasn’t a concern,” says Margaret. “That’s the kind of person he was. To him, it was a no-brainer. You just did it.”
The first word of The Rule of St. Benedict—listen—wasn’t lost on him. “He was a great listener,” says Margaret. “One of the many things our kids miss about him is that he would listen to them and help them make decisions and solve their problems.”
Liz remembers her Dad bringing their family to tour Saint John’s. “Saint John’s was very dear to him,” says Liz. “It was very meaningful to him and very much a part of who he was. It was always in his mind.”
Continuing the Work
After the March on Washington, Matt was also instrumental in getting white Catholics to participate in the civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama in 1965 for black voting rights. “It was not accidental that priests and nuns were very prominent in Selma, Alabama,” said the late Floyd Agostinelli, an NCCIJ representative in Washington. “When Dr. King’s call went out for clergy to come to Selma, Matt called dioceses all over the United States urging a turnout and indeed we got that turnout. Without Matt, that would not have been possible.” These marches ultimately led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act.
Ahmann was invited to speak at the 1965 commencement at the College of Saint Benedict. “Matt’s whole talk was about women’s rights,” remembers Don Hall ’59, a cousin who was at the commencement ceremony. “He was telling women to stand up and demand their rights. It was an eye opener for me because it was 1965 before most of us were even aware of those social conditions. We were living them, but we didn’t think about them.”
Ahmann continued with the NCCIJ until 1968. He later worked as executive director of the Commission on Church and Society, a social action commission for the Archdiocese of San Antonio, Texas where he focused on empowering and increasing opportunities for the Mexican American community. Ahmann spent the last 16 years of his career as the associate director for government relations at Catholic Charities USA in Washington, where he was well known, even by insiders on Capitol Hill, for closely following legislation. He died on December 31, 2001.
Ahmann’s legacy in both Catholic social action and civil rights lives on. Jerry Ernst credits Matt’s work as being one of the primary drivers for the church’s involvement in ecumenism and the renewal of religious orders, even though he is often not recognized. “It’s typical of Matt and his self-effacing efforts,” says Ernst. “That may be one reason why he was so successful—non-threatening, not interested in taking credit for accomplishments.”
Mathew Ahmann was posthumously awarded the Colman J. Barry Award for Contributions to Religion and Society from Saint John’s University in 2013.
VIDEO: Below is a link to a short video about Mathew Ahman's work with Dr. King. It was produced by CSB/SJU Instructional Technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIvn7DrESRM&index=15...
ARTICLE: Below is the full 2013 Saint John's Magazine article written by SOT grad Brendon Duffy.
http://issuu.com/csbsju/docs/2013_full_st__john_s_magazine_pdf/27?e=1392978/4500150