July 2: The Black Sisters of Baltimore

Welcome to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Today is July 2nd, and our story is The Black Sisters of Baltimore. Mary Elizabeth Lange had the dark skin of her mother, a native of San Domingo. Thanks to her wealthy French father, however, she knew nothing but comfort and privilege in her native Havana.

That changed after 1812, when unrest among Cuba's slaves drove Lange away from her homeland. A year later, Lange settled in Baltimore, where, regardless of her fortune, her skin color put her at the bottom of the city's social ladder.

Lange, however, didn't accept the limitations placed on her. Rather, she defied them, and used her money to open a school in her home for the children of other Caribbean immigrants, free blacks still banned from Baltimore's schools. More than a decade passed. Lange's fortune dwindled. Then, she met a Sulpician priest, Father James Joubert.

Joubert had been attempting to catechize Baltimore's free African and Caribbean Americans, but so few could read or write that he found the work nearly impossible. Lange, for her part, dreamed of entering a religious order, but found her black skin made it nearly impossible. Together, Lange and Joubert came up with a plan to make the impossible possible.

Lange would found the first religious order for black women in America, and Joubert would help her finance Catholic schools for black children. Their plan became reality on July 2, 1829, when four women, including Lange, made their vows as Oblitt sisters of Providence.

Success, however, came slowly for the Oblates. Black religious opening Catholic schools for black children scandalized many, and the sisters were mocked, insulted, and threatened for their work. For similar reasons, as Baltimore's bishops came and went, support for their work waxed and waned. At times, the sisters survived only by begging in the streets.

Nevertheless, despite overwhelming opposition, the Oblitz eventually founded more than a dozen schools in Baltimore and beyond. And by the time the 88-year-old Mother Lang died in 1882, the order's future was secure. Its work continues in Baltimore and elsewhere to this day. Servant of God, Mother Mary Lange's cause for canonization was opened in 1991. The courage of Mary Elizabeth Lange and the Oblate Sisters of Providence reminds us that faith often calls us to defy societal limits, persist through obstacles, and create institutions that uplift others.

Consider one way to use your talents to empower a marginalized community today. Thank you for listening to the American Catholic Daily Reader Podcast. Join us tomorrow, July 3rd, for another story of faith and courage in America.