Abstract of:
REFLECTIONS ON RACE
IN THE ANTEBELLUM OBLATE EXPERIENCE
Diane Batts Morrow
The Oblate Sisters
of Providence, organized in Baltimore in 1828, formed the first permanent
community of Roman Catholic sisters of African descent in the United
States. As black people, as women, as
Roman Catholics, as institutionalized religious, the Oblate Sisters formed the
antithesis of the white, male, Protestant family patriarch who typified the empowered
citizen in antebellum American society.
Nevertheless, this small band of determined women forged an institution
suffused with religious fervor and inculcated into their communal consciousness
positive senses of themselves as black women and committed religious. Their
color informed how the Oblate Sisters perceived themselves, as well as how
others perceived them. The black racial
identity of the Oblate Sisters remains the defining characteristic distinguishing
them from the other communities of women religious functioning within the
archdiocese of Baltimore during this period.
This paper examines two examples of the
significance of race in the antebellum Oblate experience previously omitted
from the historical record. Their African ancestry and Caribbean origins
positioned these sisters genealogically in a diaspora
within a diaspora: from Africa to the Caribbean to
the United States, what historian Colin Palmer has identified respectively as
the fourth and fifth major African diasporic
streams. The standard chronicle of the
Oblate experience, disregarding the sisters’ African ancestry, characterizes
them as “French in language, in sympathy, and in habit of life.” However, this
paper contends that elements of traditional African cultures plausibly
influenced the foundation of the Oblate community in important, if previously
unrecognized ways. Secondly, earlier accounts of the Oblate experience have
essentially ignored the complex, nuanced interactions
between this pioneering sisterhood and the black community they dedicated
themselves to serve. This paper explores
pertinent aspects of the mutually supportive relationship the Oblate Sisters
and the black laity forged during the antebellum period.