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Joseph Aloysius Durick
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joseph Aloysius Durick (October 13, 1914 - June 26, 1994) was a U.S. Roman Catholic bishop and civil rights advocate.
Born in Dayton, Tennessee, he grew up in Bessemer, Alabama. He studied at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore and was ordained in Rome.
On December 30, 1954, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Mobile-Birmingham, Alabama, and titular bishop of Cerbali. At age 40 he was one of the youngest bishops in the U.S. On December 11, 1963, he was appointed coadjutor bishop of Nashville, Tennessee; he succeeded as bishop on September 10, 1969, and resigned April 2, 1975, devoting himself fully to prison ministry.
Originally a conformist cleric, he and some colleagues wrote the letter "A Call For Unity", calling on Martin Luther King and "outsiders" during the Birmingham protests of 1963 to stop and let the courts work toward integration. King responded with his Letter from Birmingham Jail, voicing disappointment in the white clergy, who should be "among our strongest allies". This, and the message he got from Vatican II, led Durick to become a strong voice for civil rights in the segregated South, for which he was called a heretic and a communist by his tradition-bound congregation. In 1968-69 especially, he faced serious opposition in the form of boycotts of his public appearances.
Bishop Durick publicly opposed the Vietnam War and the death penalty, leading to more criticism from conservative circles.
He died in Bessemer, Alabama.