Guest post by Joann Stevens
(Read previous post: Venerable Henriette DeLille and Servant of God Julia Greeley)
Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman (1937–1990) was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, and reared in nearby Canton. A Catholic convert and the only child of an African American physician and educator, Sister Thea was destined to inspire the Catholic world as a singer and spiritual reconciler.
At age 15, Sister Thea became the first and only African American to join the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, a religious order in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Their missionary work at Holy Child Jesus School and Church in her hometown of Canton, Mississippi, had inspired Sister Thea’s Catholic faith. Her love of African American culture and music guided how she expressed that faith.
In her essay, The Gift of African American Sacred Song, Sister Thea wrote, “From the African Mother continent, African men and women…carried the African gift and treasure of Sacred Song, Black sacred song is soulful… Black sacred song has been at once a source and an expression of Black faith, spirituality and devotion. By song, our people have called the Spirit into our hearts, homes, churches and communities.”
As an educator, writer, singer, evangelist, and cultural bridge-builder, Sister Thea used music to cross religious and social borders at places in the North and Jim Crow South that were not always welcoming to Black Catholics. Succumbing to her pleas to become a nun, her father had warned, “They’re not going to like you up there” at that White religious order in an all-White midwestern city. She replied, “I’ll make them like me.” She took that mission to the world.
After earning a B.A. in English from Viterbo College in LaCrosse, and masters and doctorate degrees in English from the Catholic University of America, Sister Thea taught at both universities, as well as at Holy Child Jesus School in Canton. Teaching at Xavier University in New Orleans, the nation’s only historically black Catholic university, she inspired Black students and seminarians to share their love and rich cultural heritage with the church and helped found the Institute for Black Catholic Studies. She coaxed White Catholics to accept the gifts God offered through their Black brothers and sisters, and to those who viewed Afrocentric liturgy and styles of worship as “not Catholic,” to open their hearts and minds.
At the height of the civil rights movement in the 70s, the growing diversity in Catholic liturgy and spiritual justice movements emboldened Sister Thea’s tireless efforts to advance cultural diversity and inclusion in the Church. She traveled and spoke in Africa, gaining new insights, friends, and mentors. Sister Thea began wearing African clothing and became an intercultural leader for religious and laity. She helped found the National Black Sisters’ Conference to support African American women in religious life and, in 1978, she accepted an appointment by then-Bishop Bernard Brunini to direct the Office of Intercultural Affairs for the Diocese of Jackson (Mississippi).
A 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace in 1987 introduced Sister Thea’s social justice Gospel to millions and, in June 1989, she became the first African American woman to address the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. She awakened the bishops to the need for inclusion and unity, asking, “What does it mean to be Black and Catholic?” Her initial response to the question was to sing the Negro spiritual, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”
She went on to explain that being Black and Catholic “means 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, gesture and movement and teaching and preaching and healing and responsibility as a gift to the church.”
But, she told the bishops, the faith witness of Black Catholics is too often denied and devalued, creating feelings of alienation and anxiety in Black Catholics. She closed her address by having the bishops, priests, and all present link arms and sing, “We Shall Overcome,” explaining the history of the song and physical manifestation, and the importance of spiritual leadership and solidarity.
Even today, the Catholic University of America’s recent “Sister Thea Bowman Committee Report” is being used to advance racial equity and, in 2022, the university named a campus street for her. That same year, Georgetown University renamed a chapel in her honor. Similarly, as part of its recognition of the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington, Howard University dedicated the Thea Bowman Student Center on its campus in a celebration with Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the first African American cardinal in the history of the American Catholic Church.
Before succumbing to breast cancer at age 52, Sister Thea annually fulfilled some 100 speaking and preaching engagements, produced the recordings, “Sister Thea: Songs of My People” and “Round the Glory Manger, Christmas Spirituals,” and helped develop the “Lead Me, Guide Me” Black Catholic hymnal.
“She had her spirituals, the music that was so beautiful,” recalled a classmate Sister Maria Lang in an interview with the Catholic News Herald. “Most of us had been living with little or no contact with anyone of African descent. But her voice was so beautiful, it was just a very rich experience.”
Sister Mary Ann Gschwind, Sister Thea’s roommate at the Catholic University of America during the summer of 1966, added, “It took a lot of nerve for her to join our community. I don’t think I could have done it if the situation was reversed.”
Sources
- “Sister Thea Bowman encouraged others to stand up for their rights,” Catholic News Herald, November 7, 2019.
- CUA Libraries, “The Archivist’s Nook: Sr. Bowman Goes to Washington,” March 23, 2020.
- F. Veronica Wilhite, “Black Americans on the road to sainthood: Servant of God Sr. Thea Bowman, FSPA,” The Western Kentucky Catholic, March 1, 2023.
- Vinson Cunningham, “The Songs That Made Church a Home,” The New Yorker, July 15, 2020.
Joann Stevens is a freelance writer and program specialist promoting unsung and unknown African American jazz, faith, and cultural innovators who have influenced democracy and racial justice for the Common Good.
Gwen Dungy 
Pingback: The Inspirational Six, Final Post: Venerable Augustus Tolton | Gwen Dungy