America’s Real Sister Act: Excavating the Hidden History of Black Catholic Nuns in the United States

For most people, Whoopi Goldberg’s performance as Sister Mary Clarence in the Sister Act film franchise is the dominant interpretation of an African American nun and the desegregation of white Catholic sisterhood in the United States. In this presentation, Dr. Shannen Dee Williams will explore the archival and visual history of America’s real sister act: the story of how generations of Black women and girls called to the sacred vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience fought against racism, sexism, and exclusion to become and minster as consecrated women of God in the Roman Catholic Church. In so doing, she will turn attention to women’s religious life as a stronghold of racial segregation and anti-Black exclusion, and thus an important battleground in the long African American freedom struggle.

Dr. Shannen Dee Williams is Associate Professor of History at the University of Dayton. She is the author of Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle (Duke Unoversity Press, 2022).

A book signing will follow the lecture. Copies of Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle will be available for purchase at the event.