Bertha Mary Magdalen Mugrauer papers, 1950

Bertha Mary Magdalen Mugrauer was a professor of sociology at Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana, a member of the Commission on Human Rights (now Human Rights Commission), and the founder of Caritas, an interracial women's organization dedicated to serving the poor. Mugrauer's life work was largely devoted to fighting segregation and poverty. Born in 1907, Mugrauer grew up in Philadelphia in a relatively poor Catholic family, the daughter of a streetcar conductor. She joined but then was asked to leave the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament as a young woman. Mugrauer earned a Bachelor's degree from Loyola University in 1945 and studied at the graduate level at the Catholic University of America, earning her Master's degree in 1947 and a doctorate in 1949. Her dissertation, entitled "A Cultural Study of Ten Negro Girls in an Alley," focuses on the social conditions of African Americans in the United States. According to the microcards in the collection, Mugrauer's dissertation was published in 1950. Mugrauer founded Caritas in New Orleans shortly after earning her doctorate. Through this women's organization, she dedicated herself to living and working among the poor regardless of race. As part of Caritas missions, Mugrauer lived and worked in New Orleans, Mexico, and Guatemala. Mugrauer died in 1968.