Shannen Dee Williams

Shannen Dee Williams is the Albert Lepage Assistant Professor of History at Villanova University. She is completing her first book, Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle with Duke University Press. In 2018, she received the inaugural Sr. Christine Schenk Award for Young Catholic Leadership from FutureChurch for using history to foster racial justice and reconciliation in religious congregations of women.

By this Author

Anne Marie Becraft Hall in 2017, the year it was renamed. The building previously took the name of a Jesuit slaver. (CNS / Tyler Orsburn)

The black Catholic nun every American should know

Guest commentary - When asked to offer examples of the church's faithful whose experiences are essential to our understanding of American Catholic history, there is one black woman's story that I always tell.