Black History Month

by Sr. Mary Ann Zimmer

I must have been about 10 years old when I learned that my country had confiscated the property of Japanese American citizens and confined them to internment camps during World War II. I was an avid patron of our neighborhood library, and it was there that I happened upon a story about a young person who had experienced internment with his family.

I was horrified, of course, but most of all I was outraged. Why hadn’t anyone ever told me? I’m not entirely sure why this was so raw for me, but I felt betrayed by all the adults around me. They knew this about our country and had hidden it from my generation! It was my country, and I had a right to know the truth!

In many ways, U.S. Catholicism is still about where I was at ten when it comes to knowledge of the difficult racial history of our Church. Black history month does a service for all of us, if we want to face and process our truth. Here are some stories that have benefited me. Please comment on any that have been particularly enlightening for you.

Father August Tolton, born into slavery and led to freedom by his mother was refused seminary education or ordination in the U.S. because of his race. His story is now a film and his case for sainthood is moving forward. He had an unshakeable belief in his calling regardless of what many in the church did to deny it.

Sister Thea Bowman’s inspiring voice rising up in spirituals can be readily accessed on YouTube. Lesser known is her address to the Catholic bishops bringing the honest, challenging voice of Black Catholics to the United States bishops at their assembly. It is long but definitely worth reading or watching. What do you learn? What do you feel? For me she raises the question, “why do I not know any Black Catholic woman well enough to hear her story?”

Shannen Dee Williams is a scholar and author who I recently heard speak at Creighton University. She is the author of Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle. Through meticulous research she has documented the experiences of Black sisters in various religious orders. Some orders refused black candidates, held separate vow ceremonies for White and Black members, or denied equal education to African American members. Learn more here but realize that it will be a difficult read.

My first distress over having learned a dishonest history occurred over sixty years ago. Since then, I have learned a great number of other painful truths about my country and my church that were not included in the curriculum. I have learned more about who writes history and whose realities are considered essential. I have learned better to take responsibility for what I don’t know. Black history month is always a time for me to reckon with the extent to which I am content to let history-as-usual be the whole story. When I assume that only the people like me are significant enough to be claimed as our history, I am harboring a blind spot courtesy of racism. I hope I will always have in me some of that child who had that capacity to be shocked and that passion to know.