Daniel Rudd, Journalist, Publisher, Civil Rights Pioneer

American Catholic History

Noelle & Tom Crowe

Religion & Spirituality, History, Christianity, Education

4.8 • 969 Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2026

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

Daniel Rudd was born a slave in Bardstown. His family was Catholic, as was the family who enslaved them. They all worshiped God together at St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral, the first cathedral of the Diocese of Bardstown which had become the Diocese of Louisville by the time he was born. St. Joseph was right across the street from the house where he grew up. He reflected later in life about how at St. Joseph he learned that in the sacraments of the Church, all were equal before God, regardless of race or class. He was freed after the Civil War and went to live with his brother in Ohio. He worked for civil rights for blacks beginning in the late 1860s. He founded the first newspaper published by a black man for black people. His paper eventually went national. He had the approbation of many bishops and cardinals in the USA and from abroad. Eventually he worked with Father Augustus Tolton to establish the Colored Catholic Congress, the precursor to the modern National Black Catholic Congress. Daniel Rudd died in 1933 in his childhood home in Bardstown, and he is buried in the graveyard at the Proto-Cathedral.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to American Catholic history. If you like our podcast, be sure to give us a
0:10.9	five-star rating and a great review wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Newell Heister Crow. And I'm Tom Crow.
0:17.2	Today we're talking about Daniel Rudd, who was born a slave but died a free man and one of the most
0:24.0	important Catholics in the country. There are lots of interesting parts to Daniel Rudd's story,
0:29.9	starting with being born into slavery. Yes, Daniel Rudd was born in August of 1854,
0:35.5	one of 11 children born to Catholic parents who were enslaved in Bardstown,
0:40.1	Kentucky. The owner of the plantation was Catholic, as was the majority of the population in Bardstown.
0:46.3	Barstown, one of our favorite places to visit, was actually a significant city for Catholics in the
0:52.5	early part of the nation's history. It was the focal
0:55.4	point of a large group of Catholic families who left Southern Maryland in the 1780s and 1790s
1:01.3	to live in a place where they could have greater religious freedom. And for many decades, they did.
1:07.4	But some Catholics, like the Rudd's owner, did still accept slavery as a legitimate
1:12.6	practice, so it wasn't quite a model of a Catholic town just yet. Interestingly, while the
1:18.6	slave-slave-owner relationship still existed, the common Catholic faith became a point of unity
1:23.9	between them all. It was, in many ways, a great leveler of society.
1:28.5	Yet later in life, Rudd wrote how in practicing his Catholic faith as a youth, he
1:34.3	found equality among all parts of society. Rich, poor, black, white, it didn't matter. His later
1:41.9	writings are full of this sentiment. And growing up in Bardstown, Rudd experienced
1:46.2	a special Catholic element. His parish was the Proto Cathedral of St. Joseph. Right. Proto
1:52.2	Cathedral, which means the first cathedral. Right. Bardstown had been made a diocese in 1808 at the same time
1:58.6	as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, which always just seems interesting.
2:02.9	We've mentioned that a lot.
	...

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