Black and White Habits: The Painful, Yet Proud, History of Black Catholic Sisters in the United States
Presented by Shannen Dee Williams
May 25, 2022
Conversation
Historian Shannen Dee Williams speaks about her long-awaited book, "Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle," showing how the history of Black Catholic sisters is the history of Catholic sisters in the United States and provide a model of strength and faith for the entire church. Hosted by GSR National Correspondent Dan Stockman.
Resources
- NCR column by Shannen: The church must make reparation for its role in slavery, segregation
- GSR story: Voices of Faith examines discrimination, past and present, in Catholic religious life
- GSR story: 'Our reckoning': US sisters take up call to examine their role in systemic racism
- An anti-racism reading list from NCR
- GSR's three-part series on how sisters and others are working to heal cities divided after incidents of anti-black racism
Presenters
Shannen Dee Williams
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. Her first book, Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle, was published by Duke University Press on May 17, 2022.
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.
A lifelong Catholic and a member of the Executive Council of the American Catholic Historical Association, Dr. Williams also authors the award-winning column, The Griot’s Cross, for the Catholic News Service.
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