"James Bennett has written a superb study of the tensions between religion and race among black Methodists and Catholics in New Orleans between 1880 and 1920... [He] provides important comparisons of Methodist and Roman Catholic leaders and church members who either resisted or supported racial separatism and the effects of this growing separatism on their identity."
Choice "Religion and the Rise ... Read moreof Jim Crow in New Orleans is a remarkable analysis of the complex and competing forces that shaped the south at the turn of the century. Bennett is certainly right in asserting that an examination of these moments of possibility, these opportunities for a social world that did not arise, intensify our awareness of the social order that did."
Justin D. Poche, American Catholic Studies "This is an enormously intelligent book about the confrontations and negotiations within Methodist and Catholic churches over issues of race, focusing on the period between 1877 and 1920... This book sets a high standard for analysis of the nineteenth-century evolution of religion and race, and scholars of American religion and history will find it an indispensable resource."
Stephen W. Angell, Journal of Southern History Show Less