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Florida Catholic November 2020
YOUR MIAMI COMMUNITY
Hanging out with a future saint: Sister Thea Bowman
Donald Edwards, associate superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Miami, poses with an image of his good friend, now Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman.
Local Catholic shared friendship, music and soul food with Servant of God
CRISTINA CABRERA JARRO
Florida Catholic correspondent
MIAMI An acquaintance of Donald Edwards once pointed out to him that he must walk around glowing because he had a personal relationship with Sister Thea Bow- man, who, in 2018, was declared a Servant of God - the first step on the journey to canonization. I didn't even think about it. Thea was just Thea," said Edwards, the Archdiocese of Miami's asso- ciate superintendent of schools. But when you think about it, it just blows you away. I had the privilege of actually walking in the shadow of this woman who will be a saint." A granddaughter of slaves, and the only Black woman in the Fran- ciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adora- tion, Sister Thea was first a teacher, and later an advocate for racial jus- tice. She spoke across the country in gatherings that combined Gospel teaching, prayer, storytelling, and music. It was through those events that she crossed pass with Edwards. In the 1980s, his pastor invited Sis- ter Thea to host an evangelization event at their parish, St. Michael Church in Memphis, Tennessee. Edwards was principal of the pa- rochial school, and having a back- ground in music, got involved. Thea and I spent a significant amount of time together working and planning this. I put together a huge choir made up of members from Catholic church choirs from all over the city. I arranged several Negro spirituals and pieces of Gos- pel music," said Edwards. Although the parish and school community were predominantly white, he remembers a very wel- coming reception for Sister Thea and "a packed house" at St. Mi- chael's. People loved her and asked when she would return. Whenever she did, she drew out a big crowd not only of Catholics, but also Bap- tists, Methodists and Episcopalians from churches nearby. When Thea came to Memphis, people from all around wanted to come see and hear her," said Ed- wards. Those moments helped their friendship blossom. During her vis- its to Memphis, Sister Thea invited Edwards to the home of her cousins, Sally and Carl Bowman. Sally would cook collard greens, candied yams, potatoes, baked chicken or turkey: soul food. And we would eat and enjoy each other's company," Edwards said. Afterwards, they sat outside on the porch to birdwatch. And there was always music. When Sister Thea's health de- clined because of breast cancer, Edwards would drive to her home in Canton, Mississippi, bringing a keyboard along to liven her spirits and "old musical soul." We'd sing songs and just play all day, praise God, and enjoy each other's company. Thea sang songs that, as she would say, 'the old folks sang.' She had excellent sostenuto, and just a beautiful soprano voice," Edwards said.
SLAVE SONGS
She also enjoyed being in the company of old Black people. Their wisdom and character helped shape her pride as a Black woman growing up through the civil rights movement in the United States. The stories that they told, the songs they sang, the experiences that they had. I would have feared had she gone to the Franciscan Sis- ters of Perpetual Adoration that she was going to lose her blackness, her love for 'the mud of Mississippi,' her love for the music of Southern Black people. But, of course, she didn't," said Edwards. Originally raised a Protestant, Sister Thea converted to Catholi- cism at the age of 9. But she shared her roots when she sang Negro spirituals or "slave songs," hymns, and gospel music that she had learned from her mother, grandfa- ther, Mama Tolliver and Mrs. Gar- rett, who were slaves. In her album Songs of My People," the music mentioned Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Moses, David and Jesus. They used the sacred songs to teach Scripture and faith and val- ues and love and dedication. They used the songs to teach responsi- bility and prayer. Sharing the songs of faith bonded us in family and church. Sharing the songs brought hope and consolation and joy. The songs of faith are my heritage," wrote Sister Thea. In 1989, she became the first Black woman to address the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Speaking candidly, she asked them, "What does it mean to be Black and Catholic? It means that I bring myself, my Black self. I bring my whole history, my traditions, my experience, my culture, my African American song and dance and ges- ture and movement and teaching and healing and responsibility as a gift to the Church."
WALK TOGETHER'
By then, Sister Thea was wheel- chair-bound because of her ad- vanced cancer. But that did not slow her as she spoke about the need for the bishops to welcome and support a stronger presence of Blacks in the Church. If we, as a Church, walk to- gether, don't let nobody separate you. That's one thing Black folk can teach you. Don't let folks divide you," Sister Thea said. "The Church teaches us that the Church is a fam- ily, is a family of families, and the families have got to stay together. And we do know that if we do stay together, if we walk, and talk, and work, and play and stand together in Jesus' name, we'll be who we say we are: truly Catholic." From there, she led the assembly in singing "We Shall Overcome," an anthem of the civil rights move- ment. According to Sister Charlene Smith, a friend of Sister Thea who coauthored her biography, after the speech every bishop came to Sister Thea, knelt, and asked for her bless- ing. She was a holy woman, and it was powerful to be around her and spend time with her," said Ed- wards. But it never occurred to him to ask her about one day becoming a saint. "I would have loved to have heard her response to that. She probably would have said, 'Yes, if saints ate collard greens.'" After her death in 1990, Edwards began the Sister Thea Bowman Sa- cred Music Festival at St. Michael's in Memphis. He invited choirs from all over the city to an annual packed house" event. He also invit- ed Sally and Carl Bowman to speak about the life of their religious cous- in. The festival continued until Ed- wards left St. Michael's to become principal at Memphis Catholic High School. But the friendship that bound him to Sister Thea remains. "Thea was certainly an inspiration to me. And I pray to her, as do many peo- ple."
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To learn more about Sister Thea Bowman, the five other African American candidates to sainthood, and Black Catholic History Month, email blackcatholicministry@ theadom.org.
FIND OUT MORE
Listen to the entire interview with Katrenia Reeves-Jackman and Don- ald Edwards on the What the Faith, Miami? podcast, available here: bit. ly/3kpQR0K. Learn more about the history and experiences of Black Catholics at the website of the National Black Catholic Congress: www.nbccon- gress.org/.
FIND OUT MORE
and others who hail from Jamaica, the Bahamas and other parts of the Caribbean. Black Catholics are "every- one under the African diaspora," Reeves-Jackman said. "You know how we originally came. We were on those slave ships. And as those ships made their way through the Middle Passage and all up and down the seas and the oceans and through the rivers, slaves were ei- ther thrown off, jumped off, or put off so they could be sold." As with segregation, the Catho- lic Church was not immune to the norms of the era. "Everybody agrees that it is the original sin of the Church, because the Church was also involved with being slave own- ers and dealing with those times," said Reeves-Jackman. The Church's first condemna- tion of the slave trade comes in 1839, in Pope Gregory XVI's ap- ostolic letter, "In Supremo Apos- tolatus." A decade earlier in Balti- more, Mother Mary Lange - born in Cuba to Haitian parents and one of the six African Americans in the process of canonization - co-founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first religious community for Black women; three years later, a second com- munity, the Sisters of the Holy Family, is founded in New Orleans by another candidate for saint- hood, Henriette Delille. In 1875, James Healy becomes the first African American bishop in the U.S. He's one of three sib- lings who also were the first Afri- can American priests. In 1889, the first Black Catholic Congress takes place, and in 1909 the Knights of Pe- ter Claver are founded as a parallel organization to the Knights of Co- lumbus. The Society of the Divine Word opens the first seminary for Blacks in 1920 in Greenville, Mis- sissippi.
ERADICATING RACISM
In 1958, the U.S. bishops de- nounced racism for the first time. They published their first pastoral letter on the subject, "Brothers and Sisters to Us," in 1979, and followed that in 2018 with "Open Wide Our Hearts." What does that mean in practi- cal terms? Reeves-Jackman puts it this way: "When you walk into the parishes do you see people of color represented in our services? Do you see people of color on the altar? Do you see us on the walls, do you see us in the statues? We're there. We need to be recognized." There are children who've nev- er seen a picture of a black saint, maybe haven't even seen a black priest," she added. "We need to be educated. We need to learn about each other." She compared the archdiocese to a salad: "And really, it's a lot of let- tuce. But who wants to eat a salad that's just lettuce? So think about all of the different cultures that you have here. We are the tomatoes, and the bacon and the green peppers. By the time you add all the Hispan- ics, and our Haitian brothers and sisters, our African brothers and sisters, if you just put all of this stuff in that salad, in the end you have the greatest salad that you could ever have." Edwards puts it more bluntly: I don't want you to do anything. I want you to want to be my brother. I want you to want to be my sister. And I want you to be open to wor- shiping the Lord, praising the Lord and building a life with me."
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