Covington historical marker celebrates Black history

Sister Janet Bucher had a mission before retiring in July as Covington’s Church of Our Savior Pastoral Administrator and Parish Life Collaborator.

“This was a vibrant Black community back in the 40s and I feel like it was necessary that the people in the church celebrate their culture and that we keep the roots of that culture in the church,” Bucher said two days after approximately 100 people gathered in July at the East Side church to celebrate the unveiling of a new historical marker she had sought since 2023.

The historical marker commemorates the history of Our Savior church and school. The school, founded in 1943, was Northern Kentucky’s first Black Catholic school. It served Covington’s African American community, which under Jim Crow segregation only had one school in the city: the Lincoln Grant School. The marker’s dedication and Bucher’s retirement are a turning point in the East Side neighborhood’s history.

An important chapter in Covington history

Our Savior School opened its doors Sept. 1, 1943. The Diocese of Covington founded the church and school to serve the community’s growing Black Catholic population.

“Two small houses have been converted into a small chapel and a combination convent and school established,” the Kentucky Post reported in 1946.

A part-time priest and three Sisters of Divine Providence nuns originally served the new parish. The nuns served as administrators and teachers in the new school, which drew students from Covington and Newport. When Our Savior opened, there were about 2,500 Black Covington residents, half of them living in the Jacob Price Homes public housing, according to the Kentucky Post. 

“There were dozens of white schools and there was one school for African American children,” Bucher said in an interview inside the Diocese-owned home next door to the church. “The Lincoln Grant, which is right up the street here, was the only school for the Black students in Covington.”

Covington’s East Side neighborhood became the center of Black life in the city in the years after the Civil War. Schools and churches were among the first institutions established there, according to the National Register of Historic Places nomination form completed for the neighborhood in 1986.

Founded as the “Seventh Street Colored School” in 1888, the Lincoln Grant School became a magnet for Black students throughout Kenton and Boone counties, according to the 2012 National Register of Historic Places completed for the art deco Greenup Street building.

Bucher explained that the Our Savior School became an alternative to Lincoln Grant.

“If for some reason they didn’t want to go to Lincoln Grant, this was here,” Bucher said. “But most of the students were not actually Catholic.”

A 1946 fundraising drive secured the money needed to build new church and school buildings. For 20 years, the school played key roles in civil rights history, from desegregating local parks and sports to helping break color barriers at Coney Island amusement park. Notable alumni include artist Robert O’Neal and basketball player Tom Thatcher.

Our Savior’s high school closed in 1956, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court decided the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. The elementary school closed in 1963 after Covington’s local public and parochial schools desegregated.

Bucher began collecting the church and school’s history soon after arriving in 1991. She amassed a small collection of local history books documenting Black life in Covington. In 2003, to mark the parish’s 60^th anniversary, she led an effort to record and transcribe oral histories documenting the church and school history.

The small archive Bucher curated captures local civil rights, church and community history. Material from it informed Bucher’s historical marker application. Though Covington’s Black residents have a long history, very little of it has been published. It’s available in regional history books, encyclopedias and in files archived in the Kenton County Public Library.

Bucher began her Our Savior tenure when the Catholic Church faced a crisis: There were more parishioners and churches than priests. Bucher became one of several Kentucky women dubbed pastoral administrators assigned to run Catholic parishes.

“Because of a nationwide shortage of priests, the Catholic Church is turning to pastoral administrators to perform many of the tasks a priest would, except for administering the sacraments,” the Louisville Courier-Journal reported in 1995.

Bucher’s time at Our Savior began as an experiment.

“Bishop [William] Hughes said, ‘We will try this for about three years and see how it looks,’” Bucher recalls. The three-year experiment became a 33-year assignment and the final chapter in a career that began when Bucher, now 84, entered the St. Anne Convent at age 15.

A Covington native, as a child Bucher grew up on York Street and attended St. Aloysius Elementary School. After joining the Sisters of Divine Providence, Bucher worked as a teacher and in various ministerial roles including in Ecuador, Ghana and the Navajo Reservation. She moved frequently and her local posts included stints at Bishop Howard School, Corryville Catholic Elementary School in Cincinnati and Welcome House homeless shelter.

A lot has changed in the East Side since Bucher arrived at Our Savior. The Jacob Price Homes were redeveloped and many of the community’s elders have died.

“When I first came here, I visited the elders in so many of those places all through the neighborhood. And through Jacob Price. They’re all gone. They all died and Jacob Price is gone,” Bucher said. “There’s no Black community here anymore. There are some individuals, but there’s no Black community.”

A story worth commemorating

To ensure that the Black community isn’t forgotten, Bucher in 2023 reached out to Kentucky Historical Society historian James Seaver, who runs the state historical marker program. She missed the deadline for that year’s application and used the time until the 2024 deadline to complete her research and convince Seaver that the site deserved a marker.

Bucher had two hurdles to clear. The first was demonstrating that Our Savior’s history extended beyond its local footprint. The second was galvanizing community support for the marker.

“Typically houses of worship, schools, things of that nature tend to be local history topics and our philosophy is those are often better commemorated through local channels with local folks doing the work,” Seaver said after the marker’s dedication. “But there was clearly something different about Our Savior Catholic Church and School that rose to that level of having a much larger story worthy of attention throughout the state.”

Bucher’s application included newspaper clippings dating to the 1940s, oral history excerpts, and the entry for Our Savior Catholic Church published in the 2015 “Kentucky African American Encyclopedia.”

The application made a compelling case that Our Savior impacted history well beyond Covington.

“It’s really part of the greater Cincinnati area’s history as well, and Northern Kentucky’s history as well. And it’s a story worth commemorating, it’s a story worth celebrating,” Seaver said.

As for community support, Bucher submitted a ream of letters written by Our Savior congregation members, Covington residents and community leaders. She also provided letters from the diocese, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, Housing Opportunities of Northern Kentucky and historians. 

Seaver notified Bucher in July 2024 that her historical marker application had been approved. “When he called me last July, he said it probably wouldn’t be until spring of this year before we would get it,” Bucher said. 

As spring changed to summer, Bucher worried that its installation wouldn’t happen before her retirement.

“I wanted to have a big shindig to celebrate,” she said. 

Bucher got her marker and her shindig just in time. The day after the marker dedication, Bucher attended her final mass at Our Savior and she retired the following week.

“It’s not for me that I want it. I want the knowledge of the history out there,” Bucher said of the new marker. “The point is it’s there and it’s there for the history of Covington.”