Joe Cooney on December 30, 2024, at his home on South Carolina Avenue, SE. On the mantel behind him is a photo of his late wife, Lovey Marie Guillory.
Capitol Hill Worker-Priest Marched with King & Co-founded DC Legal Services for the Poor
by Larry Janezich
Posted January 8, 2025
Joe Cooney was a young cleric at Catholic University Law School in 1965 when Dr. Martin Luther King issued a call for clergy to support the second Edmund Pettus Bridge march in Selma, Alabama. On Sunday, March 7th, “Bloody Sunday,” civil rights marchers on the way to Montgomery, Alabama, had been attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by state troopers and county police and King was responding with a call for a second protest on Tuesday, March 9th.
Cooney had been ordained as a Catholic priest the year before and got superiors’ permission to travel on short notice to Selma where he marched with Dr. King and some 2,500 others in what was known as “Turnaround Tuesday.” King led the way, but in the face of a temporary restraining order, Cooney recalled that the march stopped on the bridge, marchers knelt to pray, and then turned around and returned to their rallying point. Afterward, he returned to DC. A third march all the way to Montgomery on March 21st, was protected by National Guard, FBI, and federal marshals.
Cooney said that the experience motivated him to volunteer for SCOPE that summer. The social action and education organization was created by the King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference to increase voter registration. Cooney was assigned to work in Taliaferro County, one of the least populous counties in Georgia and birthplace and home of Alexander H. Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy during the Civil War. At summer’s end he returned to DC and graduated law school in 1966.
Asked what called him to the clergy, Coooney said he grew up in Pennsylvania coal country where the local mine operator was the Pittston Coal Company – and “the worst thing you could say about anybody is that they worked for Pittston. Their police were hated…I had five members of my extended family who were killed in the mines.” Cooney said his experience of growing up there and the example of the worker priests in France and Latin America motivated him to become a priest – “People called me a communist at the time.” The French worker priests were clergy who were not assigned a parish but who worked at ordinary jobs without clerical garb in the community. According to Cooney, that practice continues within the Catholic Church today.
The summer of 1966, he again signed up with SCOPE and became involved in school integration. Cooney said they were not very successful in registering people to vote, “so Dr. King told us to go back to your community and work for civil rights there. I came back in the fall of 1966 and then in the fall of 1967 with five other priests got permission from superiors to start a program which among other things was a legal services program. The idea was to train law students. At the beginning, we worked mostly on civil problems of patients at St. Elizabeth’s.”
Cooney said, “We started the St. Martin Deporres House located at 123 11th Street, NE.” Martin Deporres was a Peruvian laybrother who advocated for social justice and was canonized in 1962 by Pope John XIII. The decision to locate in NE was because of a nearby shelter for alcoholics on 12th Street, established by a Dominican layman. “This was the beginning of our effort to provide help for the poor,” Cooney said, “King’s idea was to relate to the poor and do things in the community.”
Church approval was difficult to get, but the Church was being revitalized by Vatican II and “the Master General (of the Dominican Order) in Rome suggested we establish a St. Deporres House. I don’t think our Province would have gone for that. Legal service was a part of our charter which included other kinds of outreach to help the poor.”
Within months, the priests had a falling out with Catholic University and the diocese. Two of the priests – one of whom was a charismatic priest named Father Thomas – held mass for alcoholics in the back yard and attracted a crowd from the community. While saying mass, Father Thomas did not wear part of the vestments priests wore while saying mass. Cooney said that the Bishop became upset, resulting in a letter from the Cardinal to the diocese saying the two priests “were taking liberties with the liturgy” and stopped us from holding mass there.
Because of relationship with the diocese, Cooney said, “the dean of law school got cold feet and withdrew support for the House, so we decided to run the organization on our own.” The project needed money so Cooney went to work for Department of Agriculture as an attorney in the Civil Rights Division. Cooney said, “We continued to be active and the Cardinal had us in twice to give us a lecture.”
“What happened then was Dr. King was killed in spring of 68 and the city exploded,” Cooney remembered… “Social activism stopped – the movement broke into separate groups along gender and racial lines – and inter-racialism collapsed. We continued but had problems recruiting.”
There was also the change in the attitude of the Church, he said. Rome was changing. Cooney said that “the Master General who started us was practically fired. The whole church atmosphere was changing. There was a lot of dissension. “
Cooney continued with Legal Services in the face of this conservative backlash to Vatican II and says, “I continued working outside of the church and went to work for three years for the US Commission on Civil Rights. I stayed there until 73 then moved over to our University Legal Services (ULS) full time.” In 1975, he went on leave from his order to provide parental care until the spring of 1976. Meanwhile, the Dominicans province he was in withdrew religious support for the St. Martin Deporres House. By then, however, the legal services effort had been privately incorporated as a non-profit organization and University Legal Services continued. After the shutdown, Cooney said, “I decided that’s not what the vocation is any more.”
After serious health issues, Cooney decided, “It wasn’t for me – they not only wanted me to close up shop they wanted me to go to the Philippines to teach at a law school. They didn’t want me working…I got the hint.” He applied for and was granted dispensation from vows from the order; “I’m just not working for the Dominican Order anymore. I do not say Mass unless I were to have permission of a bishop. But I could give last rites and absolution.“
Cooney married Lovey Marie Guillory in 1979, whom he met at ULS. She was an attorney and prominent civil rights activist from Lafayette Diocese, LA. She is the author of an autobiography, Born on the Kitchen Floor in Bois Mallet. They bought a house on South Carolina Avenue, SE. Joe, retired from ULS in September, 2014. His wife passed 7 years ago. Now 91, Cooney continues to live in his home on South Carolina Avenue and is a continuing and engaging presence in the neighborhood.
Summing up, Cooney said, “Dr. King put me on the right path, directing my Catholic energy in working for the poor. And that’s the story of my life.”
University Legal Services (ULS) continues today as a private, non-profit, 501(c)(3), community-based organization that provides housing counseling and disability advocacy for human, civil and legal rights and protection for individuals throughout the District.
CAPITOL HILL CORNER 