Text

theses

Since 1824, hundreds of black women and girls have embraced the religious state in the U.S. Catholic Church. By consecrating their lives to God in a society that deemed all black people immoral, black Catholic sisters provided a powerful refutation to the racist stereotypes used by white supremacists and paternalists to exclude African Americans from the ranks of religious life and full citizenship rights. By dedicating their labors to the educational and social uplift of the largely neglected black community, black sisters challenged the Church and the nation to live up to the full promises of democracy and Catholicism. Yet, their lives and labors remain largely invisible in the annals of American and religious history. This is especially true of their efforts in the twentieth century, when black sisters pried opened the doors of Catholic higher education, desegregated several historically white congregations, and helped to launch the greatest black Catholic revolt in American history. This dissertation unearths the hidden history of black Catholic sisters in the fight for racial and educational justice in the twentieth century. Specifically, it chronicles the diverse and strategic efforts of black nuns in the long fight to secure African-American access to religious life and Catholic education after World War I. Drawing upon previously-ignored archival sources, oral history interviews, and a host of secular and religious periodicals, this study argues that black sisters are the forgotten prophets of American Catholicism and democracy. Though practically invisible in the scholarship on the African-American freedom struggle and the Catholic Church, black sisters played critical and leading roles in the fight to dismantle barriers in the white-dominated, male-hierarchal Church. By demanding adherence to canon law and Catholic social teachings, black sisters were instrumental in forcing Church leaders to adopt progressive stances on issues such as black Catholic education, the development of African-American priests and sisters, and briefly black liberation. While resistance campaigns to equity and justice proved strident and largely successful, black sisters nonetheless endowed the Catholic Church with a rich tradition of righteous struggle against racial and gender injustice and faithfulness unparalleled in the United States.

ETD_4657

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

Includes vita

by Shannen Dee Williams

http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001600001.ETD.000069003

doi:10.7282/T37S7MBS

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.