SUBVERSIVE HABITS | The History of Black Nuns

S U B V E R S I V E H A B I T S

Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle

SHANNEN DEE WILLIAMS

In the beginning, there were Mother Mary Lange and the Oblate Sisters of Providence.

The Oblate Sisters of Providence, established in Baltimore, Maryland in 1829, are the first successful Roman Catholic sisterhood established by women of African descent in the modern world. The order formed in response to the anti-Black admissions policies of European and white American sisterhoods.

Subversive Habits

Subversive Habits provides the first full history of Black Catholic nuns in the United States.

Drawing upon a wide array of sources, including previously sealed church records and over 100 oral history interviews, this book tells the story of America’s real sister act: how generations of Black Catholic women and girls called to religious life in the Roman Catholic Church fought against racism, sexism, and exclusion to become and minister as consecrated women of God.

This groundbreaking study also turns overdue attention to women’s religious life as a stronghold of white supremacy and racial segregation—and thus an important battleground in the long African American freedom struggle.

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reviews

“Deeply researched, elegantly written, and boldly argued, Subversive Habits is a brilliant excavation of the long political history of Black nuns. This is extraordinary scholarship that is as accessible as it is groundbreaking and illuminating. This timely and essential book widens the frames of Black women’s history, of religion and activism, and of Black Catholicism.”
— Barbara D. Savage, author of Your Spirits Walk beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion
“Sweeping in its scope, exhaustively researched, and balanced in presentation, Subversive Habits is a seminal history of Black Catholic Nuns and their struggle for equality and justice in the Catholic Church.”
— Bettye Collier-Thomas, author of Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion
“An awe-inspiring history book about Black nuns who fought for freedom and equality. . . . Subversive Habits is a stirring history text about the remarkable faith and conviction of Black nuns in America.”
— Melissa Wuske, Foreword
“Informative and often surprising, this should be required reading for scholars of Catholic and African American religious history and will undoubtedly become the standard text on its subject.”
— Publishers Weekly

quotes

“ Our sole wish is to do the will of God ”

– Venerable Mother Mary Lange, O.S.P.

Fig. 1.8 - 1898 Group Photo of the SSF - SSF Archives.jpg

“I want to live and die for God.”

– Venerable Mother Henriette Delille, S.S.F.

“Lord, what would you have me to do?”

— Mother Mary Theodore Williams, F.H.M.

Fig. 5.2 - Group Photo of NBSC Foundresses - NBSC.jpg

" To be celibate, black and committed gives promise and danger to life."

— Sister M. Martin de Porres Grey, R.S.M.

America’s Real Sister Act

Whoopi Goldberg’s performance as Sister Mary Clarence in the Sister Act franchise is the dominant interpretation of a Black Catholic nun and the desegregation of a white sisterhood in the United States. However, the story of America’s real sister act is different and far more compelling.

Dr. Shannen Dee Williams is Associate Professor of History at the University of Dayton. She is an award-winning scholar of the African American experience and Black Catholicism with research and teaching specializations in women’s, religious, and Black freedom movement history.

Dr. Williams holds a B.A. in history with magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors from Agnes Scott College, a M.A. in Afro-American studies from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University.

The first Black woman elected to the Executive Council of the American Catholic Historical Association, Dr. Williams is a co-founder the Fleming-Morrow Endowment in African American History at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. In 2020, Williams also submitted successful proposals to establish the Mother Mary Lange Lecture in Black Catholic History at Villanova University and the Cyprian Davis, O.S.B. Prize through the American Catholic Historical Association and the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism.

A lifelong Catholic, Dr. Williams authored the award-winning column, The Griot’s Cross, for the Catholic New Service from 2020 to 2022.

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