Race Issues and Conflict in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Religious Life: The New Orleans Sisters of the Holy Family

Abstract

Introduction The recent plethora of studies on female religious congregations in the United States reveals countless occasions when vowed religious women suffered degradations and humiliations at the hands of a patriarchal church. Indeed, gender discrimination has so affected female religious communities that it is not an exaggeration to say that it has been a central element that has touched the history of each vowed religious community, almost without exception. For African-American female religious congregations, however, gender issues, although important, have played a secondary role to those of race. There are three communities of African-American sisters. The oldest are the Oblates of Providence, founded in 1828 in Baltimore. Next in longevity are the Sisters of the Holy Family, who list 1842 as their year of origin. The youngest are the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary, founded in Georgia in 1916, but since 1924 centered in Harlem, New York City. All three congregations have distinct histories and unique charisms that differentiate them from each other. At the same time, they have much in common as a result of their African-American racial identity. Race is the distinguishing characteristic that has set them apart from other female religious congregations and has defined their place in American church and secular history. The racial prejudices of white Catholics, including those of the clergy and other female religious communities, forced these three black communities to develop strategies for negotiating with the dominant white power structure. This essay will address one of these communities, the New Orleans-based Sisters of the Holy Family. It will attempt to show how the three Holy Family cofounders negotiated with white church leaders in transforming their community from a society of pious women to a church-sanctioned, vowed religious congregation, when it seemed that the social mores of the time made such a transformation impossible. In