More than a year after some African-Americans scrutinized the blackness of the nation's first black president, America's Catholics are now wrestling with the same questions to determine who was the nation's first black priest.

The debate emerges as the Archdiocese of Chicago seeks sainthood for the Rev. Augustus Tolton, long hailed in Chicago as the first African-American clergyman to serve in the U.S. Catholic Church.

A rival for the title is Bishop James Augustine Healy, who was ordained in 1854, the year Tolton was born. But Healy, the son of an Irish-American landowner and a mixed-race slave, was light-skinned enough to pass as a white man. And in many cases, he did.
Read more at the Chicago Tribune

Like so many black Americans before him, Marvin Greer figured slavery and migration had hopelessly scattered the heirlooms of his family's past.

Now he's found some of them, but and he's not sure how to keep them intact.

The 23-year-old history buff looked on anxiously recently as a Smithsonian Institution worker catalogued and inspected his personal trove of portraits and military discharge papers, part of a museum-led push to help families like his save their history.

Years after author Alex Haley first encouraged blacks to research their roots, many are digging into attics and garages to find the rest of their history - captured in letters, portraits, beloved dolls and other long-forgotten heirlooms.
Read More: The Victoria Advocate