Charles Uncles
Father Charles Randolph Uncles, was an African-American Roman Catholic priest, who in 1891 became the first African-American priest ordained in the United States.
The son of Lorenzo and Anna Marie Uncles, of East Baltimore, he was one of the founders of St. Joseph's Society of the Sacred Heart, formed to minister to the African American community.
The Mill Hill Missionary Society recruited a number of candidates to become priests for their North American mission. Uncles was the only one of these candidates, and studied at St. Peter's Apostolic School in Liverpool, England for the task. On returning to the US, he studied at St. Joseph Seminary in Baltimore. He was ordained in December 1891 at the Cathedral of the Assumption by Cardinal James Gibbons and celebrated his first Mass on Christmas Day.
From 1891-1925 Father Uncles taught mainly in Epiphany College in Baltimore and New Windsor, New York. While residing at Epiphany College, Uncles fell ill and died July 20, 1933, considering himself to be an outcast from the Society to the racism he experienced therein. He was buried in the college's cemetery, but was exhumed in the 1970's and reburied at Calvary Cemetery in the Josephite Plot.
