Carol K. Coburn is a professor emerita of religious studies and director of the CSJ Heritage Center at Avila University. She is also a consultant for the Buchanan Initiative for Peace and Nonviolence at Avila University. Coburn has published and presented extensively on the topic of American Catholic sisters, including a co-author book with Martha Smith, CSJ, Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836-1920.
I am struck by commonalities sisters shared about their Selma experiences. In life's powerful moments, we experience events in real-time; only later do we stop to reflect on the meaning of our actions.
Reflecting on almost five decades of working with the Mohawks, Sr. Mary Christine Taylor said she has no intention of slowing down: "I travel around the whole area to visit over 150 people a week."
As a young Mercy sister in 1965, Patricia McCann did not hesitate the day she saw a letter from John Lewis and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, requesting that college students come to Alabama.
In 1965, as a young Loretto sister, Judith Baenen flew with a Kansas City contingency of Catholics to bear witness to the events in Selma. Now a Loretto co-member, she reflects on her experience 50 years later.
Q&A - St. Joseph Sr. Barbara Lum, who tended to the late Rep. John Lewis on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, talks to GSR about the Black Lives Matter movement and what she would say to young activists today.
As a young Sister of Loretto, Christine Nava served as the Webster College librarian. Then she made a significant choice in her religious life. Traveling to Selma, Alabama, to participate in a 1965 march for voting rights was "a natural consequence of what we were doing."
Decades before social media made internet trolling a common practice, Therese Stawowy knew what it was like to receive virulent hate mail from known and unknown sources. As a Sister of Loretto, she participated in the voting rights march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.
Sr. Rosemary Flanigan has been called "ethics in action" and a "force of nature." In a GSR interview, she reflects on her experience at a voting rights march in Selma in 1965, and the demands of racial justice today.
Sr. Barbara Moore was among a group of Catholic sisters (and one of only two Black sisters) who went to Selma, Alabama, in March 1965 to protest the inequality of voting rights for Black Americans.
