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Twenty years ago last week, Sister Thea Bowman lost her six-year battle with cancer. But the spirit of this educator, peacemaker and champion of human rights and Black Catholic culture continues to inspire people to shatter social barriers and achieve their human potential.

On April 15, her longtime friend Sister Charlene Smith, FSPA, will speak on the life and legacy of Sister Thea at Siena College in Loudonville.

Sister Charlene is co-author with John Feister of the new biography "Thea's Song: The Life of Thea Bowman." The talk is sponsored by Siena's Franciscan Center for Catholic Studies and the Sister Thea Bowman Center for Women.

Early life
The granddaughter of slaves, Sister Thea became the first African-American woman to receive an honorary doctorate in religion from Boston College. This was a triumph for someone who had attended a substandard school in her segregated hometown of Canton, Miss.

Sister Thea went on to dedicate her life to providing educational opportunities to disadvantaged children. She was the first African-American woman to enter the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration (FSPA) in La Crosse, Wis.

Raised in a lively black Protestant tradition, Sister Thea early on was attracted to Catholicism and converted at the age of nine. Her parents had enrolled her in a school newly established by the Franciscan Sisters.

At age 15, when she told her parents that she wanted to join the Wisconsin-based religious order, her father tried to convince her to join an order of African-American religious women in New Orleans. He told her that she would not be liked up north.

But Sister Thea's sense of determination and self-worth were already solid. She told her father that she would make people like her.

The spirit-filled gospel music and dance of her childhood became another part of the heritage she brought to Catholic prayer and worship, as she influenced Church leadership to accept the Black spiritual tradition as a valid expression of praise.

Sister Thea lectured across the country with a particular focus on the life of Black Catholics. She is immortalized in a stained glass window at St. Benedict the African Church on the south side of Chicago, along with other great women advancers of civil rights: Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.

In an interview with The Evangelist, Sister Charlene shared a poignant memory of her friend: "When we were college students at Viterbo [University in Wisconsin], one summer, we were in a dramatic production workshop together.

"When we got to the makeup section, we decided to make each other up. We were in veils at that time. I put white paint on her face and she put black on mine. We walked around that campus like that all day long and startled people. They didn't recognize me as black and her as white.

"This was a metaphor for her whole life. She was constantly trying to help people to see from another's perspective. It was a very amazing experience."

Divine aid
Sister Charlene said Sister Thea knew she was entrusted with special gifts: "She knew she had been touched by the divine. She didn't know why it happened, but she knew she could touch people and help them to see things more clearly, differently - and she was going to do that for as long as she could."

Toward the end of her battle with cancer, Sister Thea remarked that she wanted to live fully until she died. Sister Charlene recalled the African-American spirituality which animated her friend's sense of mission.

"Her witness to the world," said the author, "was her reliance on a certain kind of wisdom and a redemptive power that came through Black sacred song, because it was able to teach and inspire and challenge and transform everybody who was interested in walking together from here to heaven."

(04/08/10) [[In-content Ad]]

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