Harold Perry (1916-1991) was the first African American bishop in the Roman Catholic church's modern age.

Harold Perry's elevation to the position of bishop in 1966 was a signal that the hierarchy inside the Vatican--essentially the spiritual and authoritarian fathers of the world's millions of Catholics--were sympathetic to the civil rights struggles of African Americans both inside and outside of the faith. Perry's achievement was also a timely marker of Catholicism's efforts at liberalizing some facets of the church.

Had French Catholic Upbringing

Perry was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 1916, the oldest of six children. His father was a rice mill worker, and the Perry children grew up Catholic and French-speaking in the bilingual Creole region. They also learned tolerance of others at the knees of their parents, as Perry recalled in an interview with Ebony's Era Bell Thompson. "They taught us not to resent white people...