Actually there was another priest of African American descent who was ordained the same year that Fr. Tolton was born.
James Healy was the eldest of 10 siblings born near
Macon, Georgia, in 1839
[2] to Michael Morris Healy, an
Irish immigrant planter, and his
common-law wife Eliza Smith (sometimes recorded as Clark), a
mixed-race African-American
slave. Born in 1795, the senior Healy immigrated from
County Roscommon in
Ireland in 1818. He eventually acquired 1,500–1,600 acres (6.1–6.5 km
2) of land in
Jones County, Georgia, across the
Ocmulgee River from the market town of
Macon, Georgia. He became among the more prominent and successful
planters of the area, and eventually owned 49-60 slaves for his cotton plantation, which was labor-intensive.
[3][4] Among these was a young slave woman named Mary Eliza Smith, whom he took as his wife in 1829.
[5] Various accounts have described Mary Eliza as "slave" or "former slave," and as
mulatto or African American (the latter term includes people of mixed ancestry). The common-law marriage of Michael and Mary Healy was not unusual among immigrants; but state law prohibited interracial marriage. Most of their ten children, all but one of whom survived to adulthood, achieved noteworthy success as adults, helped by Healy's financial success and the educations he gained for them in the
North.
[5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Augustine_Healy