Toussaint, Pierre

Impact on the world

Built a successful career as New York high society's premier hairdresser after his 1807 emancipation, using his wealth to purchase his sister's and future wife's freedom, help finance the construction of what became Old St. Patrick's Cathedral, fund the city's first Catholic orphanage and first Catholic school for Black children, and personally risk his life nursing yellow fever patients during a 1798 epidemic; declared 'Venerable' by Pope John Paul II in 1996, he remains, more than two centuries after his death, widely regarded as the leading candidate to become the first African American canonized a Catholic saint.

Life & background

Born enslaved in Saint-Domingue, present-day Haiti, in 1766 to a devout Catholic enslaver who taught him to read and write and gave him access to his personal library, Toussaint was brought to New York in 1787 by his enslaver's son as the Haitian Revolution's violence intensified, where he was apprenticed to one of the city's leading hairdressers. He became extraordinarily successful serving New York's wealthiest women, including relatives of Alexander Hamilton, and used his earnings to purchase his sister Rosalie's freedom while continuing to financially support his late enslaver's widow for two decades after her husband's death left her penniless; he himself was not freed until 1807, despite having effectively supported his former enslaving family throughout that period. After marrying a fellow formerly enslaved Haitian woman, Juliette, in 1811, the couple adopted Pierre's orphaned niece and opened their home to a continuous succession of orphaned and homeless boys, funding their education and helping place them in jobs, while Toussaint separately helped finance construction of what became Old St. Patrick's Cathedral and supported the city's first Catholic orphanage and first Catholic school for Black children, this despite the orphanage serving only white children and despite the broader Catholic Church's frequent indifference or hostility to its Black members. He crossed quarantine barricades during a deadly 1798 yellow fever epidemic to nurse the sick alongside a prominent physician, attended Mass daily at the same New York church for 66 consecutive years, and died in 1853 at 87, eulogized even by a hostile era's press as a man of remarkable character; his cause for sainthood, introduced to the Vatican in 1990, led Pope John Paul II to declare him Venerable in 1996, and he remains buried, the only Black layperson interred there, in St. Patrick's Old Cathedral.

Sources

1. USCCB (On the Road to Sainthood); National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception; Washington Post; Encyclopedia.com; LA Catholics