Daniel Rudd was born on August 7th, 1854 in Bardstown, Kentucky to slave parents Robert and Elizabeth Rudd. Rudd and all 11 of his siblings were baptized in the Catholic church. Rudd was very religious, and it is unknown at what point in his life he decided to make it his life's work. Daniel Rudd moved to Springfield, Ohio in 1881 and stayed there until 1886. His journalism career started at the Sunday News. While Rudd was working at the Sunday News, he was a printer, reporter, and editor who was interested in following a Fredrick Douglass-like advocacy that was aimed at protecting the civil rights of African Americans. He believed that the press played a large role in black advancement. Rudd also thought that editors and journalists had the ability to persuade and educate Catholic, business and civic leaders. In 1885 Rudd began his first Catholic newspaper called the Ohio Tribune, he later changed the name to the American Catholic Tribune. This newspaper became the first black owned and operated national Catholic newspaper. After he founded his own newspapers, including the American Catholic Tribune in 1887, Rudd began believing that the newspaper was important in promoting the church as a transformational institution that was capable of bringing equality and social justice for African Americans. He was less concerned with the equality and social justice for other minorities such as Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Chinese Americans. “Cardinal Gibbons, arch-bishop of Baltimore, Md., the most Reverend Archbishops of Cincinnati and Philadelphia, and the Right Reverend Bishops of Covington, Ky., Columbus, OH., Richmond, Va., Vincennes, Ind., and Wilmington, Del.” were all listed on the master head of the newspaper as bishops who endorsed the newspaper. After only a short year Daniel moved the company to Cincinnati, where he started featuring articles that spoke out on black issues such as segregation and discrimination. Rudd’s mission and philosophy came through: “The Catholic Church alone can break the color line. Our people should help her to do it.”
Newspaper career
In 1885 Rudd founded The Ohio State Tribune. The fledgling, weekly race paper did not do well, however. In 1886 Rudd changed the name of the paper to the American Catholic Tribune. With a new name and editorial focus Rudd moved the newspaper to Cincinnati. By 1892, the newspaper was printing ten thousand copies. His successes led the Afro-American Press League to ask Rudd to serve as its president. The enterprising Rudd served in this capacity even as he worked to keep his Queen City printing business and printing school afloat. Rudd was the founder of Colored Catholic Congress movement which held its first meeting in Washington, D.C. in 1889. Rudd's organization meets every five years. After the collapse of Rudd's newspaper he left for the South. He worked in Bolivar County, Mississippi, as a lumber mill manager. Eventually he went to work for Scott Bond Arkansas's first black millionaire. Rudd was a very observant activist. Rudd watched various organizations, whom he interacted with, discuss matters unique to their respective organizations. He thought to gather African American Catholics to discuss various troubles in the black community. Rudd also watched the workings of the German Roman Catholic Central Verein. In September of 1887, Rudd attended a gathering in Chicago to address the group. Upon his return, he complained about how the German and Irish were organized, and how the African Americans are not. He built the idea of an English-speaking Catholic congress in hope that all races would attend. Before the call, Rudd explained that those looking for freedom must first be the ones to “strike a blow”. He believed that the way to win the black population to the Catholic church was to “find out how many Catholics we would have to start with and then put that force to work”. In May of 1888, Rudd called upon Black Catholics all over the country under the “Blessing of Holy Mother, Church” It was believed that this group could serve as a “leaven” of the race lifting all African Americans both in the eyes of God and in humanity. It was well known that Rudd’s advocacy reached farther than simple equality and justice but went beyond to national issues and problems such as legal segregation, equality for women, lynching, discrimination, employment, labor strife, and public-school segregation. He wanted to include all the injustices facing people of color everywhere, but specifically Africa and Latin America. Rudd was also a very good businessman who knew how to reach out and teach others who thought like him and wanted to push for the same rights and changes, such as black Catholics and protestants. In order for Rudd to make the changes he wanted he needed income, which he gained by using the ACT to promote his own printing school. This allowed him to expand his own business and dreams with printing, and start creating custom cards, letterheads, envelopes, invoices, pamphlets, books, legal documents, and advertisements. That wasn’t the only source of his income though, he also had newspaper subscriptions from catholic and protestant readers in northern and midwestern states. African Americans saw his will to make a change and fight for something they’ve believed in for quite some time, so many bishops, monsignors, laypersons, and even more protestants gave him financial aid. Rudd was successful for quite some time in his printing business and that allowed his ACT program to reach as many as 10,000 subscribers, while still gaining support from all over. Sadly in 1897, there was a collapse due to the economic recession and increased competition from other businesses in the newspaper industry in Cincinnati and Philadelphia. That collapse didn’t knock Rudd down completely, but encouraged him to move to Detroit, Michigan to find a more stable economy and employment for the time being.
Rudd worked as a Catholic in an era where the United States was mostly Protestant. During this time, the Catholic faith became a target to Protestants because of how they viewed the Catholic church. Rudd’s time was a very violent one for political nativism which resulted in the Catholic faith being threatened in major ways by Protestants in the United States. They were being physically threatened in forms such as the burning of churches and convents. There needed to be someone to stand up for Catholics to be treated equal with Protestants, which led Rudd to decide to speak out on public school issues for the youth. In Springfield, Ohio, public education had become an issue since Catholics wanted Catholic schools. They did not agree with Protestant methods that were being used in the American public-school system. They did not want to send their children to these public schools because they were teaching in Protestant ways. The systems that were currently in place, Catholics did not believe were sufficient to deal with problems that Catholics felt were facing the youth of the nation like “materialism and formal unbelief”. During the southern period, Rudd had gone through some personal changes about himself and his business and found it best if he moved to the south and sought work in Mississippi and Arkansas. A lot of people believe Rudd was so attracted to the south because of all the economic opportunities that opened up allowing people of color to get cheap land. Due to all the experience Rudd got from working for the newspaper industry and the ACT, he later found himself working many jobs including business manager, accountant, inventor, and teacher. After a while, Rudd started to notice that change for equality towards African Americans was moving at a very slow pace and decided to accept Booker T. Washington’s self-help philosophy. That philosophy emphasized creating and building up businesses instead of the faith and churches, to achieve maximum economic advancement toward growth and change. That philosophy of self-help didn’t last very long after Rudd was invited to and participated at the NAACP convention in Cleveland in 1919.
Later life
Many Catholic Clergy and Rudd’s close friends always described him as highly intelligent, a great businessman, and fluent in several languages, but one key thing that stuck out about Rudd was his unbreakable faith in his catholic upbringing and roots. Later in his life, Rudd returned to his childhood home of Bardstown, Kentucky. Rudd passed away in 1933 at the age of 79. He is buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery.
