Story of St. John's Catholic Church and School

Evansville, IN had a very small black Catholic population in the 1920’s and ‘30’s and they had to worship in a basement auditorium of the Assumption Cathedral.
In the early 1940’s, Mary Fendrichs Hulman heir to the Fendrichs Cigar Co and the wife of Tony Hulman owner of Clabber Girl Baking Co and who would later own the Indianapolis Speedway, was patron for construction of the church dedicated as a memorial to her mother, because many of the Black members were employees at their factory.
The dioceses sent a young priest, Father Hermann Mootz a recent graduate of St Meinrad Seminary in the southern part of Indiana, to pastor the flock
It so happened the lot my father had purchased was next door to the Churches properties And almost simultaneously our house and parish house as well as the church was built. Soon after their completion an elementary school was built on the remaining land.
Because the church was just next door, I was invited to attend mass by a friend whose family numbered 26 children and were devote Catholics. I became enamored by the rituals and mystery of the service. I had been baptized Episcopalian and there was no place in Evansville for my parents to worship. I decided to join St. John as did Ernest, my friend, after taking catechism instructions from Father Mootz. Soon after, we became his altar boys as well as errand boys. A set of twins around our age from the large family I was fiends with were altars boys too.
My parents and Aunt Mad soon became converts probably because of me and their liking for Father.
Once the elementary school was built a score of kids from Lincoln wanted to enroll in St. John’s because they thought the nuns and Father would be soft, WRONG! After the first week most scrambled back to Lincoln, when the Catholic way became the only way to be in St John’s. Ear twisting, paddling and suspension was the punishment for the slightest infraction. I was in the seventh grade and didn’t transfer finishing my grade school courses at Lincoln.
Now an interesting thing happened, my mother wanted me to go to Reitz Memorial High School, a Catholic school in Evansville, where no Blacks had attended. Father Mootz’s cousin, Archbishop Ritter, was Bishop of the Indianapolis Dioceses and southern Indiana and had recently integrated the school system their. As I have reflected over the years, I believe my mother intentionally became Catholic to gain me entrance into a school that could afford me a better education. I knew the Bishop from occasional vacation trips he made to visit Father and I had served mass and at times drinks in the parish house on some of those visits.
Father sent me out to Memorial to register. They refused to enroll me and sent me home forthwith: the reason being I had not attended a Catholic grade school…. the real reason being that was I was Black and some parents did not want to integrate the school. Remember St. John’s had just been built and I was almost finished with grade school so finishing grade school at St. John’s was not an option. Father sent me back with that explanation and I was again refused. He then called the Archbishop who issued a proclamation that anyone objecting to my admission would face the possibility of excommunication. I was sent back again and was admitted and graduated. The Archbishop and my path cross later in life, but that is another story. When my father gave up his private practice in Evansville in 1965, my parents had years before given the church first option to buy our house and an adjoining lot. The church bought the house and turned it into the nuns quarters and they donated the lot to them for future expansion.