Jim Crow infested all parts of Prince Powe’s life when he was growing up in Mobile, Ala., in the 1950s — even the realm of God.
The city was a historic center for Black Catholics and the birthplace of the Knights of Peter Claver, founded in 1909 as one of the first Catholic fraternal orders in the country for Black men, at a time when other lay groups wouldn’t accept them.
Powe’s relatives belonged to the Knights, named for a 17th century Spanish Jesuit who ministered to enslaved people in Colombia and is the country’s patron saint. He attended Catholic school and remembers an active community in Mobile filled with baptisms, weddings and first communions…