Since 1990, November has been recognized as Black Catholic History Month. This designation by the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus was to bring attention to the history and contributions of Black Catholics in the United States. In parishes and Catholic schools across the nation, there will be many different commemorative events to celebrate this month through liturgies, musical and dramatic presentations, highlighting the life stories of the six Black American Catholics currently being reviewed for canonization, on the pathway to sainthood.
This month, in particular, is a time to contemplate the lives of extraordinary men and women who found the gift of faith in spite of circumstances they faced during their lives. All but one lived during the period of legalized enslavement of people of African descent. The six include the Venerable Pierre Toussant (1776-1853); Venerable Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange (1784-1882); Venerable Sister Henriette Delille (1812-1862); Venerable Father Augustus Tolton (1854-1897); Servant of God Julia Greeley (circa between 1833 and 1848 -1918); and Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman (1937-1990).
I have been focusing on the life of Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman. She is the most contemporary member of the group, born in Canton, Mississippi in 1937. Sister Thea Bowman attended The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., from 1966 to 1972 and earned her master of arts degree and Ph.D. in English literature.
I find myself thinking of her often as I walk through the same campus where she studied, taught and discovered her special ministry. I find myself wanting to learn more about her as I read about her and speak with people who knew her, all of whom visibly light up as they remember experiencing her joy and kindness. How did she find her way to become a Catholic, a nun, and the powerful message she spoke calling the Church in the United States to fully embrace its Black brothers and sisters in faith? Her story is powerful. Several of my colleagues and I have been studying her life story by reading and discussing a beautiful biography written by her former student, Father Maurice Nutt, titled Faithful and Free.
In his book, Father Nutt describes how Sister Bowman became a Catholic. Her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Bowman, were Methodist and Episcopalian. Growing up in Canton, she participated in their faith traditions and those of her neighbors. However, wanting the best educational experience possible for young Thea, they enrolled her in a Catholic school, Holy Child of Jesus. It was founded by Trinitarian Missionaries at the request of the Black community frustrated by the poorly equipped and inadequate segregated public school in Canton. The school would be supported by nuns from the religious Order of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration from La Crosse, Wisconsin. The nuns not only served as the teachers in the school, but they also became immersed in the underserved community to help in whatever way they could.
It would be the example of these nuns and their actions of love and charity toward the community of Canton that would move young Thea Bowman of nine years of age, to ask her parents to let her be baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, which they did. Later at the age of 15, she announced her desire to leave her home in Mississippi to prepare to join this order of nuns in Wisconsin. At first her parents objected, but they subsequently relented when a determined Thea would refuse to eat, in protest.
To say the least, it was hard for me and my colleagues to imagine one so young to be able to discern that this was to be the pathway for her life, much less the personal courage she possessed to do so. She would uproot herself from her home to go to the order’s motherhouse in Wisconsin, a place where she would be the first and only Black person in the order and where there were few Blacks living in the community of La Crosse. In reflection, Sister Bowman said the following about this experience:
“I was drawn to examine and accept the Catholic faith because of the day-to-day lived witness of Catholic Christians, who first loved me, then shared with me their story, their values, their beliefs, who first loved me, then invited me to share with them in community, prayer and mission. As a child I did not recognize evangelization at work in my life. I did recognize love, service, community, prayer and faith.”
According to Father Nutt’s biography, her father would express concerns that this White community in La Crosse would not want her or like her, but she had so much faith in her choice to answer, “I’m going to make them like me.” As any Black person knows, whenever one is the first to break a racial barrier, we will be a curiosity, scrutinized, doubted, and even the subject of animosity. According to her story she would experience all of this, and still, she would make them like her. Based on what I have learned about Sister Bowman, I imagine many would come to love her.
After her religious preparation, taking vows, and earning a bachelor’s degree at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Sister Bowman would come to Washington, D.C. in 1966, to attend The Catholic University of America. Being in Washington she would encounter a different experience as a Black Catholic, no longer the only one, but one of many.
Many Black Catholics in Washington during this time were actively engaged in a burgeoning civil rights movement. They joined in the movement, calling the nation to fulfill its promises of equal justice for all citizens and began a Black Catholic movement calling the Church to fulfill its Christian obligation to include Black Catholics as full and equal participants in the life and leadership of the Church.
Sister Bowman would experience all of this in Washington, including advocacy for political and social justice, and the growing interest and celebration of Black history, culture and identity throughout the Black community. She would become an eloquent and persuasive speaker on these issues and their importance in the Church’s full inclusion and understanding of Black Catholics in the United States. As she would later say in her famous address before the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1989, a year before her death:
“What does it mean to be Black and Catholic, it means that I come to my Church fully functioning... I bring myself, my Black self, all that I am, all that I have, all that I hope to become, I bring my whole history, my traditions, my experience, my culture, my African-American song and dance and gesture and movement and teaching and preaching and healing and responsibility as gifts to the Church.”
Sister Thea Bowman’s expression of herself as a Black Catholic and the voice she found in Washington while attending the university reminded of me a song that was an anthem among the Black community in the 1960s, “To be young, gifted and Black” by Nina Simone. Sister Bowman was unquestionably that when she attended the university. I believe an even more accurate anthem celebrating her life and legacy would be titled, “To be faithful, free and Black.” I also believe that if Sister Bowman were with us in Washington today, she would take joy in witnessing the energetic example of Black Catholics who lead, serve and worship in the Church faithfully and freely every day.
(Veryl Miles serves as a special assistant to the president and is a professor of law at The Catholic University of America.)
