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160 l CATHOLICISM (1948); and Margaret Anna Cusack, The Nun of Kenmare: An Autobiography, ed. Maria Luddy (1998). On Leonora Barry, see Philip Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement, vol. 1 (1979). Dissertations by Florence Jean Deacon, “Handmaids or Autonomous Women: The Charitable Activities, Institution Building and Communal Relationships of Catholic Sisters in Nineteenth Century Wisconsin” (University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1989); and Mary Ewens, “The Role of the Nun in Nineteenth Century America” (University of Minnesota, 1971), have addressed the lives of women religious in this period . For the service of nuns during the Civil War, see Mary Denis Maher, To Bind Up the Wounds: Catholic Sister Nurses in the U.S. Civil War (1989). AFRICAN AMERICAN CATHOLIC WOMEN Cecilia A. Moore THE FIRST KNOWN Catholic of African descent in North America was not a woman. His name was Esteban , and he was a slave. In 1536, he accompanied a band of Spanish explorers surveying an area now known as Florida, Texas, and Arkansas. Esteban’s story is important to the history of African American Catholic women because it manifests the presence and contributions of black Catholics from the earliest days of Catholicism in the New World. His enslavement was a harbinger of over 300 years of African American Catholic experience. There can be no understanding of the history of African American Catholics without an acute sensibility to the ways in which slavery shaped African American Catholics ’ experience and engagement with their faith. Esteban ’s story is important to the histories of African American Catholic women because it adumbrates themes particular to their experiences. His role as an explorer is symbolic of the innovations and initiatives in religious life, social justice, education, and religious and cultural expression that are the hallmarks of African American Catholic women’s history. By the mid-sixteenth century, Spain was aggressively colonizing the Caribbean and the southernmost part of what is now considered to be the United States. Hoping to build an empire based on the agricultural riches of these areas, the Spanish enslaved Africans to work for the plantations they established. Young men of sturdy constitutions were most desired for slavery, but women were also imported to work side by side with the men and to bear new generations of slaves. Sacramental records from Florida and the Caribbean indicate that Catholic masters tended to abide by the requirements of the Church that slaves be baptized in the Church. Africans were also married in and buried from the Roman Catholic Church. By the eighteenth century communities of enslaved black Catholics existed. But Africans did not arrive in North America stripped of religious sensibilities or convictions. The transatlantic voyages and consequent bondage did not destroy their religious traditions, values, beliefs, and principles. And while it is imprudent to claim a monolithic African religion, it is possible to identify characteristics West African religions share in common. Among these are faith in the gods and ancestors, the primacy of family and community over the individual, corporate worship, belief in the efficacy of prayers of the living to the dead, sacrifice to the gods, the idea of death as passage to a greater life, and adaptability in religious practice. African women held significant roles in West African religions. In some cases women served in priestlike roles. Elderly women enjoyed reverence because their communities regarded them as wise in spiritual and temporal matters. Women also served as healers, leaders of religious rituals, and the primary religion teachers of their children. One way Europeans convinced themselves that they were justified in enslaving Africans was by asserting that slavery was a way to bring Christianity to Africans, whom they considered to be heathens. Skipping over the fact that Christianity has a much older history in Africa than in the West, Europeans contended that slavery was justified by bringing the light of true faith, faith in Jesus Christ, to a people doomed to damnation without it. Catholic Europeans involved in the slave trade particularly believed that Catholicism would save the Africans. Many Catholic masters felt a spiritual urgency and religious obligation to have those they enslaved baptized. The less fervent had their slaves baptized to stay in the good graces of the political interests of the time. Still others thought greater coercion over them could be exercised by controlling slave religious practice and theology . Some Africans already may have been Catholic when they arrived in the New World, although this is not likely. But it is clear...

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