Saint Joseph Catholic Church (Alexandria, Virginia)

Saint Joseph Catholic Church is a predominantly Black Catholic church located at 711 N. Columbus St in historic Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. It was founded in 1916 to provide African-American parishioners of the local St. Mary's Roman Catholic Parish with their own church, freed from the customary restrictions that segregation imposed on them. Spurred on by Thomas Blair, the Black sexton and sacristan of St. Mary for over thirty years, a lot in the Black neighborhood of ‘Uptown’ was acquired in 1914. Groundbreaking for the new Saint Joseph Catholic Church followed the next year, and the brick gothic revival church was dedicated in 1916. The first priest appointed to the new parish was Rev. Joseph J. Kelly of the Josephites, a mission society founded following the Civil War with a special apostolate in ministry to Black and Native American Catholics. The church Saint Joseph became known as the “colored church” among Alexandrian Catholics until 1969, when it was designated as a territorial parish. The church continues to cultivate its Black heritage as a proud aspect of its cultural history and is the only Black Catholic parish in the diocese. It remains associated with the Josephites to this day. Saint Joseph Catholic was the last of nine historic Black churches founded in Alexandria between the Civil War and the First World War. The church was added to the National Register

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