Subversive Habits

In Subversive Habits, Shannen Dee Williams provides the first full history of Black Catholic nuns in the United States, hailing them as the "forgotten prophets" of Catholicism and democracy. Drawing on oral histories and previously sealed church records, Williams traces how Black sisters' struggles were informed by and intersected with secular freedom movements. For Black Catholic women and girls, embracing the celibate religious state constituted a radical act of resistance to white supremacy and the sexual terrorism built into the nation's systems of chattel slavery and segregation. Williams shows how Black sisters--such as Sister Mary Antona Ebo, who was the only Black member of the inaugural delegation of Catholic sisters to travel to Selma, Alabama, and join the pivotal Black voting rights marches of 1965--were pioneering Black religious leaders, educators, healthcare professionals, desegregation foot soldiers, Black power activists, and womanist theologians. In the process, Williams calls attention to women's religious life in the Roman Catholic Church as a stronghold of white supremacy and racial segregation--and thus an important battleground in the long African American freedom struggle.