Falls, Arthur (1901-2000), was an African American physician who also worked for racial equality and a more just society. Falls brought the Catholic Worker movement to Chicago , Illinois, in the 1930’s. This Roman Catholic social movement works to further peace, social justice, and the interests of poor and working-class people. Throughout his life, Falls emphasized the idea that racial prejudice and discrimination were contrary to the true character of the Catholic faith.
Arthur Grand Pré Falls was born on Dec. 25, 1901, into a Creole Catholic family in Chicago. Creoles are mixed-race descendants of enslaved Africans and French or Spanish colonists in the southern United States . Falls’s father worked for the postal service, and his mother was a dressmaker. Falls attended public elementary and high schools, because most of the local Catholic schools would not admit African Americans. After attending a junior college, he studied medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. He received a license to practice medicine in 1925. Falls set up a medical practice on Chicago’s South Side, a largely African American neighborhood. At the time, almost no Chicago hospitals hired black doctors or treated black patients. For some years, Falls also worked as a surgeon and chief of staff at Provident Hospital, founded by a black surgeon to treat black patients. Falls’s activism eventually influenced many hospitals in Chicago to accept both African American doctors and patients.
In 1933, American journalist Dorothy Day and French-born philosopher Peter Maurin founded the Catholic Worker movement in New York City , New York. Falls was an early reader of the movement’s newspaper, The Catholic Worker. He was inspired by the movement’s vision of combining strong religious faith with social justice. Falls wrote letters to The Catholic Worker and eventually became a regular contributor to the paper. He also persuaded Day to change the paper’s front-page design, which showed two white workmen, to one showing a white and a black workman.
In 1936, Falls organized the first Catholic Worker group in Chicago for the purpose of round-table discussions on social and religious issues. In time, several Catholic Worker “houses of hospitality” opened in Chicago to provide food and shelter for the poor and unemployed. Young followers of the Catholic Worker movement in the city became devoted to Falls’s causes of racial justice and nonviolent social action.
Starting in the 1930’s, Falls was active in many Catholic interracial groups, including the Federated Colored Catholics and the Chicago Catholic Interracial Council. In 1953, he moved with his family to the Chicago suburb of Western Springs, where they became its first black residents in the face of local opposition. In 1961, Falls joined a group of 10 black doctors in suing many Chicago hospitals for racial discrimination. The hospitals eventually agreed to end discriminatory practices. Falls died on Jan. 9, 2000, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
