Daniel Rudd Award presented to Juanita Currie

Published: January 20, 2017

Malea Hargett

Juanita Currie, a member of St. Peter Church in Pine Bluff, accepts the annual Daniel Rudd Memorial Award from Bishop Anthony B. Taylor during the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Mass Jan. 14.

Malea Hargett

Juanita Currie, a member of St. Peter Church in Pine Bluff, accepts the annual Daniel Rudd Memorial Award from Bishop Anthony B. Taylor during the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Mass Jan. 14.

The Diocesan Council for Black Catholics honored Juanita Currie, a member of St. Peter Church in Pine Bluff, with its annual Daniel Rudd Memorial Award during the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Mass Jan. 14 at the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Little Rock.

Currie served as co-chair of the parish’s Saturday Soup Kitchen as well as serving as a board member for Neighbor to Neighbor, a food pantry in Jefferson County; president of the parish finance committee; wife and mother.

The award is handed out to black Catholic laity who contributed positively to their parish and diocese. Rudd was a former slave who lived in Marion, Ark., and started the first National Black Catholic Congress. He published the first black Catholic weekly, the American Catholic Tribune, in 1886. He died in 1933.