Katie's Canon: Enfleshing Womanism, Mentoring, and the Soul of the Black Community

Abstract

Katie's CanonEnfleshing Womanism, Mentoring, and the Soul of the Black Community Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas (bio) When I think about Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon, I cannot help but acknowledge the great debt I owe—and so it's a privileged obligation to pay tribute to her life, lessons, and legacy, which made my own womanist beginnings possible. In essence, I am speaking of the "origin story" of when and where I first met Dr. Cannon. I first began pondering the relationship between faith and ethics as a schoolgirl, while listening to my grandmother teach the central affirmations of Christianity within the context of a racially segregated society. My community of faith taught me the principles of God's universal parenthood, which engendered a social, intellectual, and cultural ethos that embraced the equal humanity of all people. Yet, my city, state, and nation declared it a punishable offense against the laws and mores for blacks and whites to "travel, eat, defecate, wait, be buried, make love, play, relax and even speak together, except in the stereotyped context of master and servant interaction."1 It was 1991 when I discovered and read those words and the 174 pages that followed them. As I stood amid the stacks of Candler School of Theology's Pitts Theological Library, I became wrapped up in the work, witness, and words of Katie Cannon's definitive text Black Womanist Ethics. Prior to this chance encounter, I did not even know the name Katie Cannon. But her explicit naming of her approach as "womanist ethics" quickened my soul, opened my mind, and set my feet on a course toward becoming the womanist ethicist I am today. "Womanism," as Katie Cannon framed it, took my mind to where my soul had always been. [End Page 101] After receiving word from Religion Department Chair John Raines that I had received the Future Faculty Fellowship at Temple University, I promptly shared my excitement with Dr. Cannon. She was a bit hesitant during that conversation because she was unsure whether I would accept admission to Temple's graduate program given that I had more competitive offers elsewhere but, as I affirmed to her on the phone that day, "I'm not applying to a school, I'm applying to be mentored by you." At that time, I had no idea that I was the first student of hers to make this appeal. But she was to be the first black woman teacher-mentor I would experience in my academic career. As in all things, she took note of it and wrote me the following words in a letter before I met her in fall 1993: Greetings from Kannapolis, NC! I write to you from my parents' kitchen table where I shared with my mother, Ms. Corine, that you are to be my first doctoral student. I want to be the first to offer congratulations to both of us! It's apparent that you really want to study womanist ethics. . . . The particular usefulness of womanist ethics is (1) to know and do justice to the moral resources and tradition of Black women's lives; (2) to help black women remember, redeem and reproduce the moral wisdom that they utilize; and (3) to engage Black women and other feminists of color who have given up on the community of faith so we might gain new insights concerning the reasonableness of theological ethics in deepening our character, consciousness and capacity in our collective struggle for survival. These are my criteria, and this is the work, I believe, both our souls must have. In my mind, the real-life palpability, scholarly precision, and engaging pedagogy of her womanist work captured and distilled the most essential truths about human nature, in general, and black women, in particular. That's why I think Katie Cannon was bigger than life to so many of us. It's no surprise that we liken so many of her professional exploits to epic superhero sagas. Each one of us writing in this section can attest to Katie Cannon being a superhero—boldly going where so many others had never gone before in order to articulate the truths that some called...