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Daniel Rudd, a journalist from Ohio and founder of the American Catholic Tribune, becomes a leader of Black laity. Fiercely proud of the Catholic Church, Rudd claims the Church is the one place of hope for Black people. Rudd recruits delegates for the first Black Catholic Congress, the first Black Catholic lay congress in U.S. history. In January 1889, almost 100 Black Catholic men meet with President Grover Cleveland on the last day of the congress.