to a northern state that prohibited slavery. Racial identity Due to their largely European ancestry, the Healy children were light-skinned enough to pass for White and they did not publicize their Black heritage. James and his siblings were recorded as White in official documents, such as census records and death certificates. In later years, James discouraged biographies and variously described his mother as the daughter of an aristocratic Virginia family or having come from Santo Domingo. However, their mixed race was known to some; writing to Archbishop John Hughes in 1859, Bishop John Bernard Fitzpatrick mentioned that Sherwood Healy "has African blood and it shews [sic] distinctly in his exterior." Some three decades after the last of the Healy children died, Jesuit sociologist Albert S. Foley published a book in 1954 that detailed their biracial background. Education As enslaved people under Georgia law, the Healy children were prohibited from attending school. In 1837, at age seven, Michael Healy took James to New York and enrolled him at a Quaker school in Flushing, New York City that was associated with the Old Quaker Meeting House. James continued his education at another Quaker school in Burlington, New Jersey, where he excelled in mathematics and apprenticed to a surveyor. After Michael Healy became acquainted with Bishop John Fitzpatrick of Boston, he sent his son to the College of the Holy Cross, a newly founded Jesuit school in Worcester, Massachusetts. James Healy entered Holy Cross in August 1844 and would later recount in his diary, "Today, 5 years ago I entered this college. What a change. Then I was nothing, now I am a Catholic." He and his brothers Hugh, Patrick, and Sherwood were baptized at Holy Cross in November 1844, alongside the sons of Catholic convert Orestes Brownson. James spent his school vacations with the families of local priests in Boston and Cambridge. He was named valedictorian of the first graduating class at Holy Cross in 1849. Priesthood Following his graduation from Holy Cross, Healy decided to enter the priesthood and was accepted into Saint-Sulpice Seminary in Montreal, Quebec. After three years in Canada, he went to France in 1852 to complete his theological studies at the Sulpician Seminary in Paris. Healy was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Boston in Paris on June 10, 1854 at Notre-Dame Cathedral by Archbishop Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour. Healy thus became the first African American to join