America’s real sister act
“When we narrate the history of the church from the perspective of Black nuns,” says historian Shannen Dee Williams, “myths about the Catholic past fall quickly and they fall hard.”
History professor Shannen Dee Williams (AP Photo / Aaron Doster)
Shannen Dee Williams is an associate professor of history at the University of Dayton who specializes in the African American experience and Black Catholicism. She is author of Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle. Hear the full version of this interview on the Century podcast In Search Of.
Can we start with an introduction to some of the Black Catholic sisters in your book?
Absolutely. Subversive Habits tells what I consider to be the story of America’s real sister act: the story of how generations of African American Catholic women and girls fought against discrimination and exclusion to be able to answer God’s call and minister as consecrated women of God in the Roman Catholic Church.
