Our Mother of Africa Chapel
- tourdeforcedc
- Apr 11
- 5 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Designed by Ed Dwight, with the Madonna and Child by Dwight and also the Ancestors relief by Dwight (the sculptures of the four apostles and of the crucified Jesus Christ are by different artists).
Location:
Rear crypt area, lower level, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, 400 Michigan Ave NE, Washington, DC 20017. Adjacent to the campus of the Catholic University. Walking distance from the Red Line Metro station, Brookland-CUA. Admission is free and open to the public.
Visual Description:
One enters the Mother of Africa Chapel, a nave in the rear crypt area of the National Shrine, by stepping over an image derived from a depiction of the Henrietta Marie, a British merchant slave ship. which sank on its return journey from Florida to England. The image evokes innumerable enslaved people crammed in horrific conditions during the 35,000 documented voyages of the Middle Passage. Facing directly in front of the visitor on the far wall of the nave is a cross by artist Jeffrey Brosk with a solid ebony figure of the Crucified Jesus by Juvenal Kaliki, grounded in Tanzanian artistic traditions.
To the right is the most elaborate artwork in the Chapel, The Ancestors, a bas relief panel by Ed Dwight which depicts the experiences of Blacks from the era of the slave trade through slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights campaigns, and the modern era. The images proceed chronologically from right to left: In the opening section, one sees horrific scenes of Africans being whipped, perhaps by a slave trader. An intermediate section shows three small figures — a bare breasted woman and a male with a child on his shoulder — on an auction block, above the words “Slaves for Sale.” There follows a long procession of Black men and women with stooped backs, perhaps evocative of the Great Migration. The figures then rise up, one with first raised. A male freedman carries a sign, Jobs for All Now, perhaps recalling the 1963 March on Washington. The final sequence, projecting out of the frame, depicts a well dressed father, holding a Bible, along with mother, daughter and son as a unit. The entire assemblage is lit by the rays of the sun above, emanating from a winged figure.
The Ancestors panel directly faces, in an inset niche area of the nave, Dwight’s large bronze sculpture of Mary the Blessed Mother with the infant Jesus in her arms. Both subjects are depicted with African features. The foot of the infant Jesus is brightly burnished, presumably by being frequently touched or kissed by prayerful visitors.
On the adjacent walls are relief sculptures of the four Apostles – John, Peter, Mark, and Paul — with African features.
Historical Background:
Three million Black Catholics constitute about six percent of the overall BlackAfrican American population. Catholicism dates back to the earliest Black presence in North America. It should also be noted that many Black Catholics in the U.S. are immigrants, or descended from post-1865, from Africa,. the Caribbean, and Latin America.
Although not directly alluded to in the relief work, it should be noted that early Catholic orders in British North America owned slaves. Nearby Georgetown College, the forerunner of Georgetown University, secured its financial survival through the 1838 sale to Louisiana of over 272 enslaved people from southern Maryland plantations by Jesuit leaders., Maryland, as a predominantly Catholic colony, including the lands that later became the District of Columbia, was home to many Catholic slaveowners, enslaved people, and freed-people during the colonial and antebellum era. The Ancestors relief does not seem to directly reference this local history of the area that would become Washington DC, as it foregrounds the Great Migration from the Deep South to the North. Nor does the Chapel directly reference the long history of Catholicism within Africa, including the Kingdom of Congo: the emphasis here is on the Black Catholic experience in the United States.
Our Mother of Africa Chapel was developed and funded through the National Black Catholic Conference and formally dedicated in 1997. It should be noted that depictions of Mary, Jesus, and the Church Fathers were overwhelmingly white in American Christianity until the mid 20th century, when religious Civil Rights activists increasingly campaigned for more inclusive visual representations of Jesus and the Saints. An early example of a Black Jesus is a stained glass window donated in 1877 to St Mark’s Church in Warren, Rhode Island. See: https://theconversation.com/in-1877-a-stained-glass-window-depicted-jesus-as-black-for-the-first-time-a-scholar-of-visual-images-unpacks-its-history-and-significance-226095
Interpretive Notes:
The entire nave has maritime imagery, reminding us of both slave vessels and the watery grave of so many who perished at sea. The curved mahogany ceiling may be evocative of the hull or interior of a wooden slave ship, and aquatic symbols including carved fish (a symbol of Christian faith) are found throughout the nave. The overall effect of the design may be to emphasize a theme of rising to the surface, coming out of the long night of submerged historical trauma through the benevolent intervention of the Blessed Mother.
In the Ancestors panel the family torn apart by the slave sale in the earlier panel, seems to have been reunited, through God’s Grace in the final segment, as a united family under the leadership of the father figure.
Prompts for closer looking:
Why did the designers and artists consider it so important to depict Jesus, the Blessed Mother Mary, and the four Apostles with African features?
How does the overall design of the nave and its component artworks evoke themes both of historical trauma and of hope? Consider the use of light and dark materials within the Chapel, and of evocations of marine and celestial elements.
What is achieved in the Ancestors relief panel by variations in the shallowness and depth of the depicted figures? Why are most of the figures, from more tragic moments in history, embedded within the frame, and why at the far left, closest to the Cross, does the modern family protrude out of the frame, into the nave itself?
Why have designers positioned the “Ancestors: relief directly across from the statue of Mary with the infant Jesus, with Jesus holding out his hand in the direction of the relief panel, which depicts so much terrible suffering.
Learning Resources
Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mother_of_Africa_Chapel
A virtual tour of the Chapel is accessible at:
The book by Rachel Swarms, “The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build The American Catholic Church “ Random House, 2023, is an important account of the sale of enslaved people to fund Georgetown College in 1938.
Possible creative response
Compose a prayer or song that might be recited or performed within Our Mother of Africa Chapel.
Propose a design for a work of art that might engage with the particular history of Catholic slaveholding and Black Catholic liberation struggles in the history of Maryland and the District of Columbia.
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