Sister Sandra: A Black Catholic Nun and the Struggle for Equality in Church and Community

Sister Sandra Smithson, a Black Franciscan nun from Tennessee, lived her extraordinary life on the forefront of change. A passionate educator, she was committed to working directly with disadvantaged students and strived to reform local and national education policy to better serve these children until her death in 2022 at age ninety-six. Smithson first joined the School Sisters of St. Francis in 1954, one of the only orders of nuns who accepted African American women at the time, and made ...