by a saint.
== History ==
=== Background ===
Katharine Drexel, a Catholic nun possessing a substantial inheritance from her father, banker-financier Francis Drexel, founded and staffed many institutions throughout the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, in an effort to help educate and evangelize Native Americans and African Americans. Many of her chosen staff included sisters of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, the religious order she founded and served in as the first Superior General.
Aware of the lack of Catholic education for young black people in the South during Jim Crow, she planned to establish a high school in New Orleans. The chosen site had been previously occupied by Southern University on Magazine Street, a black institution which had moved to Baton Rouge after an influx of white neighbors petitioned for its relocation.
Drexel sent the Josephite priest Pierre Oscar LeBeau to survey the property, to avoid public scrutiny and controversy, as her reputation for establishing black …
