BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2019 FEATURED ARTICLE 1 (Feb 5): Nuns Witnessed Who Witnessed MLK’s Life and Death

February 5, 2019 0 By BLACKCATHOLIC

Here’s the first feature article for Black History Month.

Nuns who were active during the Civil Rights Movement and were with MLK both in life and death tell their story.

CNA article (2018):

“This Martin Luther King Jr. Day will be the first without Sister Mary Antona Ebo, the only black Catholic nun who marched with civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, Ala in 1965.”

“‘I’m here because I’m a Negro, a nun, a Catholic, and because I want to bear witness,’ Sister Mary Antona Ebo said to fellow demonstrators at a March 10, 1965 protest attended by King. Ebo was, in fact, the only African-American nun at the protest.”

“Just before she left for Alabama, she heard that a white minister who had traveled to Selma . . . had been severely attacked . . . At the time, Ebo said, she wondered: ‘If they would beat a white minister to death on the streets of Selma, what are they going to do when I show up?'”

“‘We were obviously not allowed to go in when they were working with him because they were feverishly working with him,” Sister Jane Marie said. “But after they pronounced him dead we did go back into the E.R.'”

The rest of the article.