In 1961, the young, popular and Catholic President John F. Kennedy signed the Peace Corps into law. In 1962, the Catholic Youth Center in Minneapolis launched Peace Corps, junior grade, to capture the spirit of its namesake and empower high school students from across Minneapolis and the west metro to put their faith into practice for two weeks (or more) of their summer vacation under the supervision of young adults.
High school freshmen were limited to in-town projects, but sophomore, junior and senior volunteers could choose to serve on a local music ministry team, support inner-city residents in Winnipeg, Canada, or San Felipe, Mexico, or work on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota (among other sites). Like young people across the city and the country, Catholic students were inspired by the civil rights movement to do something to solve social problems.
Peace Corps junior grade members went to work. At Pine Ridge, for example, young people served on projects like digging ditches or sewing curtains in the morning and led a school for Native American children in the afternoon. The program was meaningful for participants, too. Maureen Arms, a junior at then-St. Margaret’s Academy, explained, “You don’t go into the program with a paternal attitude — ‘We’re going to do something for you’ — because we get more out of it than they do.” Students learned more about inequality, poverty and their own abilities as leaders and problem solvers. As Dennis Neal, one staff leader, explained, “Christianity doesn’t mean just piety; it means service.”
Evidently, naming programs after the Peace Corps was a popular tactic because the federal government passed a law in 1963 prohibiting other groups from using the title. The Minneapolis program was renamed Operation Neighbor Corps, but its efforts to give high school students summer service opportunities and leadership training continued to expand. By the 1980s, ON Corps had provided more than 6,000 Catholic high school students in the Twin Cities with leadership and service experiences that would shape their faith and futures. For some, they inspired careers in education, social work or even international relations.
ON Corps was one of many programs offered for teenagers and young adults at the Catholic Youth Center in Minneapolis. During the school year, retreats, weekend seminars and study groups were designed to help high school students integrate Catholicism with daily living while learning leadership skills. The Saturday Nighters program supported high school graduates to continue to live these values in small communities. Members often became mentors in the high school programs and volunteered at fundraisers that benefited ON Corps.
CYC’s home for all of these programs was a mansion at 2120 Park Ave. in Minneapolis, built in 1902 for Franklin Crosby, a leader in the Minneapolis flour business. After the CYC closed in 1994, Abbott Northwestern Hospital and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis reached an agreement to turn it into a center for AIDS patients in 1995. Today, the house is home to some of People Incorporated’s mental health services.
Luiken is a Catholic and a historian with a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. She loves exploring and sharing the hidden histories that touch our lives every day.
