The local chapter of the Midwest Clergy Conference on Negro Welfare attempted to integrate Webster
in 1943, but St. Louis Archbishop John J. Glennon blocked the
enrollment of a young black woman by speaking directly with the superior of the Sisters of Loretto in Kentucky. The Pittsburgh Courier, a national black newspaper, ran a front-page feature on the Webster incident.
After Glennon's death in 1946, the new St. Louis Archbishop, Joseph E.
Ritter, moved swiftly to remove barriers to the integration of the city's Catholic educational institutions.