Eugene Boyle

The Rt Rev. Eugene Monsignor Boyle (July 28, 1921 – May 24, 2016) was an American Catholic priest and activist based in California.

Eugene was born in San Francisco on July 28, 1921.

He attended Saint John's School in San Francisco, Saint Joseph's College Seminary in Mountain View and Saint Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, and was ordained by Archbishop John J. Mitty on June 15, 1946.

In 1956, he became the host of his own radio show on KCBS, entitled "Underscore: Catholic Views in Review", described as "an adult show voicing the dialogue of religion and modern life" and discussed topics such as church-state relations, the Civil Rights Movement and Social Justice.

The show lead to Boyle gaining the reputation of "San Francisco's leading liberal Catholic intellectual".

He became known in the 1960s and 1970s for supporting the Civil Rights Movement as well as left-wing political groups such as the United Farm Workers and the Black Panther Party.

He was the first Catholic clergyman to run for the legislature in California history, despite opposition from within the Catholic hierarchy.

After ordination, Father Boyle served in parishes in San Francisco and Livermore, eventually becoming Pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in San Francisco by the late 1960s.

Boyle became politically active, as many priests in that time were, after being influenced by the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s, which encouraged Catholics to actively engage themselves in the world.

The work of the CIC was considered important and contemporary by the Church in the 1960s; beyond the national debate that had emerged from the Civil Rights Movement, the Black population of San Francisco had risen from just 4,846 around 1940 to a considerable 74,000 in 1960.

With this sudden increase in population, racial tensions had risen in the area.

The work of the CIC brought Boyle into the Civil Rights movement itself, although he admitted himself that he was reluctant to do so at first out of the shame of breaking social norms in America;

In 1962, Boyle was recruited to become Chaplain of the Archdiocese of San Francisco's "Catholic Interracial Council", a group dedicated to promoting harmony between the black and white communities in San Francisco.

Boyle's involvement in the Civil Rights Movement saw him march with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 at a protest around San Francisco City Hall, in response to Civil Rights leaders including King being targeted by a bomb while staying at a hotel in Alabama.

However, as Boyle was further pulled into interracial dialogue and public life, the more comfortable he became with it.

Along with the CIC, He campaigned for "fair housing" in San Francisco, working to fight the, which allowed white real estate sellers to discriminated against "coloured" people.

Boyle was able to rally the Catholic Bishops of San Francisco against the proposed law, who then came out and vocally condemned it, but despite these efforts, it was still voted into law.

While the Bill was later ruled unconstitutional, Boyle was highly disappointed by the public, feeling that the bill was clearly immoral.

Despite losing the vote, Boyle was still spurred to fight for civil rights.

The campaign against the Fair Housing Act had seen him made chairperson of the newly established San Francisco Archdiocesan Commission on Social Justice, further augmenting his authority to speak and tackle social justice issues in San Francisco.

Furthermore, the campaign had also brought together a coalition of various religious group from around the city that Boyle could harness to fight for civil rights.

In 1965, Boyle joined Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign in Selma, Alabama for the Selma to Montgomery marches.

That same year he also joined up with Cesar Chavez on a protest march from Delano to Sacramento, which was the beginnings of the Delano grape strike.

In the years to come Boyle would become an important ally to Chavez and the United Farm Workers labour movement.

In 1968 and 1969 Boyle would face back-to-back controversies that would see him pitted in arguments against his superiors in the Catholic hierarchy.

The first controversy was the "little Kerner Report".

1968 the Kerner Commission published a report on the cause of the riots of the Long, hot summer of 1967.

It concluded that racism was the ultimate cause of the riots.

The report caused enormous controversy across the United States of America for the starkness of the language used to express its findings.

In the wake of the findings of the Kerner Report, the San Francisco Conference on Race, Religion, and Social Concerns (SFCRRSC) asked Boyle and seminaries working under him to create a report in a similar vein, examining the conditions of the Black Community in San Francisco.

What Boyle had intended to be a 40-page report became a 600-page titan entitled "San Francisco: City in Crisis" and became nicknamed the "Little Kerner Report".

In its findings, the report contained not just criticism of the wider white power structure in San Francisco, but also levelled criticism against Churches and Synagogues in San Francisco.

The SFCRRSC lead a press conference to announce the publishing of the report and report became front-page news in the City and caused massive controversy.

Despite praising his effort, San Francisco Major Joseph Alioto denounced the report, calling it "inflammatory and ill-conceived".

What partially alarmed and infuriated the establishment in San Francisco was that the report suggested a race riot could be imminent in the city.

Archbishop Joseph Thomas McGucken, Boyle's direct religious superior, publicly supported the report when it was published.

However, two months after the report came out, Boyle was moved to a new, predominantly African-American parish.

Then the following year McGucken cancelled Boyle's yearly seminar, privately fearing the seminarians were becoming too political.

Boyle's new parish was roughly in the Western Addition neighbourhood of San Francisco, which was predominantly African-American.

Through working and engaging with the community, Boyle came into contact with the Black Panther Party, who had originated just over the Bay Bridge in Oakland.