text: "Southern churches, particularly in New Orleans, had segregated pews."
  
  But people like Sister Katharine Drexel (now Saint) and her religious community (Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament) didn't sit idly by. While it was customary to make blacks stand or sit in roped-off areas at the rear of a church, she and her Sisters (heeding her direct orders) made sure that Catholic churches connected to her Community offered two rows of pews running from front to back, one for blacks and one for whites, side by side. This small gesture in the direction of equality gave Catholic and Protestant (segregationist) authorities no statutory grounds for closing down her institutions, her sites of worship. In 1915, she also founded Xavier University for African Americans, which institution continues to place more African Americans into medical schools than any other college in the US. Sadly, other religious orders, parishes didn't follow suit. But Drexel, St. K. Drexel, was something  else!! She had grit.