Dr. Shannen Dee Williams Gives Black History Lecture At St. Meinrad

Dr. Shannen Dee Williams was about to give up on her on Catholic upbringing.

Despite being a “cradle Catholic,” Williams admitted she was “on her way out of the church.”

But God intervened, she said, and now she’s not going anywhere.

Williams, assistant professor of history at Villanova University, gave the annual Black History Lecture at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology the evening of Feb. 12. About 100 people attend the lecture in St. Bede Theater.

Her lecture, "The Real Sister Act: Black Catholic Sisters in the United States” outlined African-American religious history and black Catholic history.

“Certainly in honor of Black History Month, what we want to do is to remind people there is no American history without black history,” Williams said. “And what I want to remind people is there is no Catholic history without black history.”

Williams is currently revising the manuscript for her first book, “Subversive Habits: The Untold Stories of Black Catholic Sisters in the United States,” to be published by Duke University Press. Her research and book uncover the hidden history of a largely forgotten group of black churchwomen, and the critical roles they played in the black freedom struggle within Catholic boundaries.

It was almost by accident how Williams stumbled upon what became her book topic. While in graduate school searching for a topic in African-American history, Williams discovered a newspaper article announcing the formation of the National Black Sisters Conference in 1968. After investigating more, she uncovered appalling examples of racism, racial segregation and marginalization by white religious leaders and peers.

But, honestly, Williams doesn’t think it was chance that brought her to this project.

“I grew up never knowing this history,” she said. “It’s not something I was ever taught in Catholic school or in public school. I experienced what I can only call a metanoia because I thought: ‘Oh my goodness, there are black nuns.’”

For many years, Williams only knew of Sister Mary Clarence, from the 1992 hit movie “Sister Act” featuring Whoopi Goldberg.

“What does that mean, this history could be so invisible to me and I’m a member of the church,” she asked.

The story of America’s “real sister act” is a story we don’t generally hear about, Williams noted, but it’s one that we “absolutely need to know.”

“It is, at times, an uncomfortable story,” she admitted. “This is the story of how generations of black Catholic women and girls fought against racial segregation and collusion to be able to answer God’s call in their lives. These are people who are truly fighting to make the Church Catholic. Racial segregation and exclusion had no place in the Church.”

Oftentimes, Williams said we think of African-Americans as solely being protestant, but there is a “long and rich tradition of Catholicism.”

Many of the women she spoke about were descendants of – or themselves – former slaves of the Church. At their peak around 1965, Williams said there were about 1,000 African-American sisters. Today there are about 300.

These women were the “foot-soldiers of desegregation,” Williams explained, many of whom desegregated communities and women’s religious orders.

“For me, the story about black Catholic sisters is especially important because they are the first representatives of the African-American community to enter religious life,” she said. “They are the first ones to found Catholic schools and orphanages. They declared, by their ministries, that the lives of black people matter.”

In response to an audience question, Williams advised priests and religious people to be courageous.

“Be honest with what the Church is – the good, the bad and the ugly,” she said. “Be bold and look to your ancestors in the Church. These women endured so much, yet their faith never wavered.”

Her work has been personally validating. And, she said, in the midst of everything she is hopeful because in the past couple of years two of the nation’s oldest and most powerful Catholic institutions have declared the lives and history of black catholic sisters matter.

First, Georgetown University, as part of its efforts to atone for its slave-holding past, renamed one of the education halls after Ann Marie Becraft, who founded the first Catholic school for black girls in 1820. Second, the U.S. Catholic bishops recently gave their ascent to the canonization effort launched for Sister Thea Bowman by the Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi. Sister Thea is representative of the generation of black women and girls who desegregated women’s religious orders after World War II.

“I’m excited because it does suggest we’ve turned a new corner,” Williams said. “And that we are ready to embrace this real story of America’s Sister Act.”

Photos courtesy of St. Meinrad Archabbey.