(gentle music) - Illinois Stories is brought to you by The Corporation For Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency and by the support of viewers like you.

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- Hello.

Welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in Quincy at St. Peter's Catholic church and school, in front of maybe the only statue that anybody knows of, of father Augustine Tolton.

And that's what the story's about today, its about Reverend Tolton, first black priest in the United States of America.

He was ordained in Rome, came back here to work in Quincy and in Chicago and died an early death.

But he had a very, very spiritual life, in fact, he's being considered for sainthood as we speak.

And what this story is about, is about a project, to bring some of Father Tolton's series of of activities to light, through artwork and through a series of engravings.

They're gonna be here at St. Peter's.

And Monsignor Enlow, this didn't just happen.

I mean, you had to, of course you have the statue of Tolton here but you admire this man for what he did in his short life, and you sorta took this project on, didn't it?

- We did.

And it was rather interesting how the idea came to my mind.

We had to, we had a particular wall that was sort of falling down a little bit, so we had somebody come up and prop it up with some concrete and some metal plates.

And I got to think in some one day, what could we do to cover those metal plates to make it more attractive, to make it maybe a type of spiritual experience.

And so, prayed about it, thought about it thought about the stations of the cross but we only had nine instead of 14.

So I got to thinking, well this is the parish that took pride in especially one of our, one of our parishioners and that's Father Augustine Tolton.

And so we've had many pilgrimages come here.

So I thought, why not try to capture his life, on some kind of plaques?

And that's where I talked to one of our artist who you'll be meeting shortly.

And he came up with a brilliant idea and each of the plaques is symbolic.

And they portray Father Tolton's life from the very earliest beginnings to finally his coming back and being buried at St. Peter's cemetery in Quincy.

- I see.

Okay, great project.

Now, we're gonna go, meet the artist like you said, Marc, he's gonna show us the sketches.

We're also gonna go to the monument company where they're engraving or etching these plaques, right?

- Correct - Okay.

We can see that.

That's gonna be fascinating, but what I wanna know before I let you go, is where are we in the canonization process?

Because becoming a Saint, it takes a lot of time, there are steps involved.

How is this coming together?

- As of right now, it's in the hands of Rome.

They've sent forward, I know of one miracle in particular, and it's been questioned and hopefully gonna be verified.

And then they're seeking another miracle, because usually it takes about two miracles, to make this happen.

It's sort of an authorization that this person is in heaven, because two miracles that occur in the use of his intercession and in the use of his name would indicate that, yes, he's close to God praying for us.

And so right now it's in the hands of Rome.

- And there are steps involved, right?

- Right - I mean, first, I guess you get nominated, And then the Pope's cadre of people look at your past and look at your life and you move through certain steps.

Where is he now?

Do we know?

- He's right now at the stage of being Venerable.

That's what the title is.

And hopefully soon, he will become Blessed and then Sainthood.

So we're anticipating that day and hopefully, will come soon enough.

- You know, Monsignor, if that happens this is gonna become a tourist site.

- I hope so.

And that's why the project is even more, more relevant for us.

And I do think that the project, it's symbolizes as it says his name and his legacy and his work and his ministry in the short time that he was with us.

- Yeah.

We just a little bit about him.

He was a slave.

His mother brought him here from Missouri.

They took a dangerous trip across the river.

Didn't they, to bring, she brought the family here.

And that's how he came to become an Illinoisan and to become a priest.

- Missouri was a slave state.

And so his dad went into the service of Union Army, and unfortunately they will never see him again.

And he would die in the St Louis hospital of a disease but they didn't know that for a long time.

So his mother had a decision to make, because there was a thought that perhaps to Augustine and his sister and his mother would be sold again into somebody else, with somebody else.

And she feared that, because when they were living out at Brush Creek, which is just in the Missouri side, outside of Hannibal, it was a rough type type of living but it was some stability to it.

And so she decided then some night, she would get in a rowboat and cross the Mississippi.

I just can't imagine her doing that, having one oar and you know, I've been on a rowboat myself and two oars is enough to keep it going but I can't imagine what she did, having three kids with her.

- Yeah.

- And the youngest one being 20 months of age.

- Yeah.

Great bravery.

- Tremendous.

- He had a good role model, didn't he?

- He did.

He learned his faith from his mother.

- Thank you Monsignor.

- You're welcome - Marc Arntzen, now we're in your shop at Gem City.

- Yes, welcome.

- Yeah.

Thank you.

This is a fascinating process because we were talking about, how are we gonna get the artwork from paper to this marble plaque?

And these marble plaques we're hearing, and of course at St. Peter, how does it get there?

- Well, actually these are granite plaques.

- Oh, granite.

- And it's called a Jet Black Granite, and how it gets there is Tim Haubrich, the creator of the artwork.

- Yeah.

- He sent them to me in a digital format.

And then we go back through and tweak any low areas to make them nice and crisp, and then we send them to our machine - And this machine is computerized.

So then after you scan it it takes that information and it processes it, and it can it really pulls out the finished product.

Right.

It creates a dark pattern when we send it to this machine similar to the old dot matrix printers that we used to use.

It actually causes a tiny explosion everywhere where there's a dot and that creates the white areas in the granite.

It's very controlled process.

And that's how you get the images but it is a permanent process.

And that will always be in that granite, unless somebody refinishes.

- How long has this technology been available?

- Probably about 20 to 25 years.

- That long?

Right.

If I would have been the very forefront, we've been doing it for about 12 years.

- So most of the monuments that you make here are done with this process?

- Any black stones that we do are dark colored granite.

You cannot do this on the light colored granite but you can do on the dark.

- So for the light colored ones, you're still doing sort of by hand?

- We still do the sand engraving, where it's deeply part of it here.

We've got an area right behind us here, where we do that.

- Yeah.

And I understand that you're doing this, for this project.

This is a pro bono.

- Right.

Right.

- Well, that's good for you.

And we can see where we are in the process here.

The bottom of this caustic and this tunic are showing.

I think those are the proper terms and St. Monica of course, and farther up, we'd see the State of Illinois.

And I guess that was St. Monica church.... - Right.

This is where it shows us transferring from the Quincy parish to the Chicago parish.

And it was on Dearborn avenue.

- Its fascinating, and you have some of these done already, don't you?

- We do, We do.

I think this is number six out of the nine that we're doing.

- How long will it take to do this plaque?

It takes about five to six hours to do each plaque.

And that is once the machine starts, that is not all of our prop work.

That is once the machine starts until it is finished.

- Wow.

Fascinating.

Thank you.

- Well, Mark, we're kind of working backwards here, cause we saw what's gonna be the finished product as the etching is going on, but this is where you kinda tweak it and get it ready for them machine, Right?

- That's right.

We run it through a program called Photoshop.

We also use a program called Corel.

And on the left that you're looking at now is the original that Tim sent me.

And then if we pan over to the right that is the actual proof that is going to the laser machine.

We have to reverse the colors, which are just black and white at this point, because when the machine engraves, the black part is going to be white, and the white part is going to be black.

And that is what we want it to look like, on the final product - You have to kind of think backwards, don't you?

- Yes, yes.

- Well, it's working, we saw it working and it's doing what it should/ - That's right?

Yeah.

I hit this one on a home run.

- And you got the nine of these, right?

- Yes, yes - So you've got a few more to go.

- I think we've got three more, that we haven't started on yet.

That we've got six of them.

- Hope you've got home runs in you?

- Yes.

- That's terrific.

It's fascinating work.

- Tim Haubrich, this project wouldn't happen unless somebody took an artistic interest in bringing it to life, and that person had to be you.

- Correct.

- How'd you get involved?

- Well, I've been in the printing business and been doing artwork all my life.

And as a member of St Peter's, I spent some time with Father Liam.

He was talking one time, he had this idea.

So he went down and showed me, and so this evolved into this project here to honor Father Tolton, who was a member of our parish.

So I said, I'll jump right on it.

- Had you been aware of Father Tolton before?

- Yes I was.

The pastor, Father Roy Bauer who was actually pastor of St. Peter's when I got married at St. Peter's and became a personal friend.

He actually did some work for us.

I did some printing of Father Tolton books.

So I was aware of that.

I laid out his books, I did his artwork.

I worked closely with Father Bauer and about four or five other book projects that he's done.

And so I had some idea of that and it, to me after talking to Monsignor Enlow, well, let's do the life of Father Tolton and break it down into, there were nine of those steel plates on the wall.

- Right.

- So that's where we came up with a number nine.

So we had to put his life into nine tablets.

And so that's how this whole idea started.

And then, my original idea was to put steel plates up and cut them, so you could see through it and then backlight it.

And after talking to Mr. Arntzen, it was like, well it would be better to put it on the granite, so we opted for that.

- Oh, it's gonna be beautiful.

- I'm amazed at what I've seen so far.

- Yeah.

Well, let's take a look at your artwork that is now being transformed into those plaques that we just saw.

This is number one, right?

- This is number one.

And if you see, what you see here is on every plaque, he was in as a slave crossed over, but at Brush Prairie which is not far from here, they have the church.

And then, I tried to put as much symbol as I could into each plaque.

So what you gonna see on these is you'll always see the state where it was.

So it gives you an idea of where things were and naturally the star.

And then he was a slave.

His parents were married here and he was baptized in the same church.

So that's why we have the baptismal font.

And then as a young slave baby, looking at the church where his parents were.

So that's how this one was.

- Yeah.

And then we learned from Father Enlow that his father passed away.

- Correct.

- And then let's go to number two and see what happens next.

- So his mother, as Monsignor Enlow stated, came across the river to Illinois, which was a free state.

And so that's what this one here.

And if you look, you got Missouri and Illinois.

So he was coming to both, slave in one and we have the Dove for his freedom.

- Oh, I see the hands in the shackles.

- Correct.

- In Missouri.

And then, yeah.

And the dove flying across the river.

Nice.

So she's in a boat with what, three kids?

- There's three kids.

And this image, what I did is I found different photographs and actually drew on some of them.

But then I would take that photograph and turn it into basically a line drawing.

Some of it is hand drawn, but on the computer screen.

But some of it was just with some filters and everything to get this look to come up with that.

- Very, very impressive.

Let's take, let's move ahead.

- Okay.

And then he landed here and they started to go in to St. Peter's church, which is I think a tornado, took it out.

I forget when in the forties sometime, but he was an alter boy there.

And so here you have more symbolism with the cross of St. Peter's to tell what this church was, was downtown Quincy.

A young alter boy.

And if you notice on the state of Illinois, we have the Gem.

Cause Quincy is known as the Gem City.

- The Gem City.

Sure.

Okay.

Move ahead for us.

This is fascinating.

- And next he was proud of it.

He could not get in any seminaries in the United States.

- Because he was black.

- Because he was black.

So he went to Rome where it didn't matter.

So here we have St. John Lateran and then with Italy and that's a young Father Tolton right there.

And then the artwork here, if you look there symbolism for the ordination in the middle of Italy.

- Nice.

- So when he came back, he was put in charge of St. Joseph's church, which was also downtown.

It was a Negro parish.

And he was there for, I don't know how many years but that he was pastor there for a long time and had a rather large congregation, from what I understand.

Then again, he got the congregation, he got the Gem city again, Here's St. Joseph symbol up there.

- So there were black Catholics and there was a black congregation, but there were no black priest because he was the first black priest.

- He was the first.

Correct.

- So at that time, white priests were administering or leading Catholic black parish.

- Correct.

- And this church that we're looking at here, this is no longer there.

- That is no longer there.

I believe it was around seventh in Jersey.

I know there is a plaque standing on the street side right there.

And then again, like I say, I think that's about where it is.

So, yeah.

And he was there and then he went from there to, because of the politics and things, he was, not ran out of town, but I think asked to leave.

- I had heard, Father Enlow corroborated this.

He was so popular with his congregation that there were some jealousy involved with some other priests.

- Right.

- And one of the higher ranking priests saw to it that he was moved to Chicago.

- That is correct.

- Man, that's low.

- They sent him to Chicago, to St. Monica's and that's where Illinois began with more symbolism.

signs for St. Monica's and then the Gem city.

And that church was at 36 Dearborn in Chicago, which is no longer there.

- This is the plaque that we're seeing made right now.

- Correct.

- Yeah.

Okay.

So he goes up to Saint Monica and was it his last stop?

- That was his last stop where I believe, he died at an early age, but he got sick up there and passed away.

I forget how old he was, but he wasn't very old.

- He was in his forties.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

He's a young - He was a young Man.

And then this is his grave, which is here in Quincy.

Got some plaque up or that up there, but it does show the funeral procession, which he is buried here.

- And they can find that at St. Peters cemetery.

- St Peters Cemetery.

Right here in Quincy.

- Okay.

And of course, they can, his statue right in front of the school, which we saw earlier.

- Right in front of school.

And then here is, this is probably one of my favorite plaques.

Venerable.

He's waiting for his sainthood.

And that kind of shows the Communion of Saints.

This is an actual photograph that I took while I was over in Rome.

- It looks like the dome of a, is it a dome?

- No, it's called a dispute of by Raphael.

It's in, I believe one of the I think a Papal apartments over there, I believe I could be wrong.

And my art history, is left me.

but I took that my photograph and made this that is of the statue that is out front of St. Peter's that I took and put in front of it and then added the world.

So, you know, show everything.

- And, and we're talking as we remind the audience that those, that aren't Catholic are unaware of this.

On the road to sainthood, there are various steps.

- There's a lot of steps.

- And right now he's considered venerable, which is I guess, two from being considered a Saint.

- Correct.

- And so this is him waiting for?

- Waiting for sainthood - Sainthood and the community or the communion of saints is above his head.

Beautiful, beautiful.

- So on the last one is going to be a prayer just for him.

- Would you, read that for us?

- The Catholic church, deplores double slavery that of the mind and that of the body.

She endeavors to free us both.

I must now give praise to that son of the Emerald Isle, Father Peter McGirr, who promised me that I would be educated and kept in his word.

It was the priest of the church, who taught me to pray and to forgive my persecutors.

When I was admitted to the college of Propaganda, I found out that I was not the only black man there.

There were students from Africa, China, Japan and other parts of the world, The church which knows and makes no distinction in race and color, had called them all.

When the church does this, is she not a true liberator of race?

- Wow.

He's a deep thinker too.

- He is a deep thinker.

That's why he had the following he had.

- Yeah.

And maybe only a former slave could have written that.

- Correct.

Living both sides.

- Yeah.

Beautiful.

So now that you see your work coming to life, what will you be there, when the plaques are put up or will you be there for the installation?

- I would like to see part of it.

I've been intrigued by the whole process.

The artwork comes easy to me, but seeing this end of it, it's fascinating to see you that come to life on the ground.

- Yeah.

And when those plaques are put in there that's sort of a thoroughfare for the kids from school to go to and from.

- Correct.

- Kids will be passing that, every day.

- Every day, the school comes down they gotta walk down those stairs to go to the cafeteria.

So they'll have, they'll see it every day.

And I have a grandson at that school now, in kindergarten.

So he doesn't quite understand it but he will hopefully walk down and look at some grandpa's work.

- Yeah.

Well, as he gets older, I mean, he'll age and those will age and they'll all become very familiar to you know, how kids are.

They remember certain things, you know, throughout that.

Well, Tim, thank you for all your work on this.

- Well, thank you.

- It's been really beautiful to look at and it's a nice project.

Thanks for your help.

- It was a great project.

Thanks for doing this.

- Four plaques down and five to go.

And as you can see, the artwork translates beautifully on these black marble plaques.

They're hoping to have these installed within just a couple of weeks.

With another Illinois Story in Quincy, I'm Mark MacDonald.

Thanks for watching (gentle music) - Illinois Stories is brought to you by The corporation For Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.