Leading a civil rights march in Selma, Ala., 37 years ago was more than playing out a moment of American history for Sister Antona Ebo.

It was a moment of truth in a life remarkably filled with defining moments.

Sister Ebo was one of the first three black women received as postulants of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary religious order. She was the first black sister to serve as administrator of a Catholic hospital in the United States. And the first black nun to march in support of the right to register to vote in Selma in 1965.

Then, three years later, she founded the National Black Sister’s Conference.

During a mid-May visit to Sacramento to address a conference of black Catholic women in the diocese, Sister Ebo focused on the “gift and genius” of black women by giving prolific illustrations of black women through history—surviving, overcoming, inspiring, and “making do with what they’ve got.”

But perhaps the best example of personal triumph over injustice is Sister Ebo’s own courageous journey of faith. Born 78 years ago to a Baptist family in Bloomington, Ill., her mother died when she was four. Soon after, her father lost his job, and she and her brother and sister were placed in the McLean County Home for Colored Children, an institution that primarily supported Protestant families. It was here that she met “Bish,” short for Bishop, a 12-year-old Catholic boy who would change her life.

“I became interested in the fact he wore black beads around his neck, and he knew how to pray in Latin,” Sister Ebo said.

She also recalled the sadness she felt about the unfairness of Bish being forbidden by the home to attend Mass.

Then one day she and Bish were sent to town to pick up day-old bread from the local bakery, and they took a short cut past St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

“Bish went into the church and up to the communion rail, knelt down and prayed. He had a real longing for the Eucharist,” Sister Ebo said. “This child taught me about Jesus and the bread of everlasting life.”

While in high school, she was further nurtured in the Catholic faith by women religious and a priest who she met while at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Bloomington for tuberculosis of the bone. When the McLean County Home asked Sister Ebo to confirm rumors she was studying to be a Catholic, she faced a moment of truth.

“I knew from that moment on I wasn’t going to get a roof over my head, but God still provided,” she said.

Sister Ebo was expelled from McLean but found a new home with family friends. She then enrolled in a Catholic high school run by Dominican Sisters, who she credits with nurturing her in the faith. In 1942 at the age of 18, Sister Ebo was baptized a Catholic.

After being refused admission to a Catholic school of nursing in Bloomington, Sister Ebo enrolled in St. Mary’s Infirmary for the Colored, a nursing school in St. Louis. Run by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary, the infirmary was a place where she would begin praying for a vocation to religious life. In 1954, Sister Ebo took her final vows.

By March 1965, Sister Ebo had become director of the medical record department at St. Mary’s Infirmary. She remembers learning at that time about “Bloody Sunday,” when civil rights marchers were beaten with billy clubs and trampled by the horses of Alabama state troopers—news that was televised nationwide.

“When I heard about what happened, I said, ‘If I didn’t have this habit on, I’d be down there with those people,’” Sister Ebo said.

The words were no sooner out of her mouth than she received a call from her superior asking if she wanted to go to march in Selma the next day.

“It was put up or shut up,” chuckled Sister Ebo, who said racial tension was further intensified by the fact that a young white minister had been beaten to death in Selma just before the trip. “It was also another moment of truth.”

On March 10 she was one of six sisters from three religious communities in a St. Louis delegation that included 48 ministers, priests and rabbis bound for Selma. They met in Brown’s Chapel, a Methodist church, packed with people praying for non-violence. Sister Ebo was momentarily spellbound when she was introduced to speak by a white minister who told her she was the first black nun he had ever seen.

“Yesterday I voted in a primary in St. Louis and God called my bluff, and here I am in your midst, witnessing I am a Negro, I am a Catholic, I am a sister, and I am here to support your right to register to vote,” Sister Ebo said.

Moments later she and six Roman Catholic nuns were leading more than 500 civil rights demonstrators marching on Selma’s Dallas County Courthouse, only to be turned back by police.

Cathy Brown, a member of Presentation Parish in Sacramento, was among those attending the recent conference sponsored by the Sacramento Black Catholic Council. She said hearing the story of Sister Ebo’s life—like the lives of other courageous African American women before her—moves others to follow their lead.

“Women out there who do a lot of godlike things empower us to do the same,” Brown said. “For me Sister Ebo is a very positive validation who inspired me to make sure I am a positive role model for my three boys.”

Sister Ebo’s contributions as a woman religious in the struggle for civil rights for African Americans have not gone unnoticed. In 1995 she received an honorary doctorate from Loyola University in Chicago for service to the church. She was named the St. Charles Lwanga Center’s Trailblazer Award winner for pioneering the spirit of black ancestry in 1999. The Living Legend Award was presented to her by the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma in 2000.

Sister Ebo currently serves as pastoral associate at St. Nicholas Church in St. Louis.

Copyright © 2001 Diocese of Sacramento - All Rights Reserved

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