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 96. 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 it her mission to challenge the status quo in her community and her church, even when it put her at great personal risk. In Sister Sandra by Theresa Laurence, Smithson's expansive life and legacy is recorded for the first time, from her educational ministry in South America, to cofounding a nonprofit in Middle Tennessee that served children and advocated for policy change in public education.

Thoughtful, opinionated, and beholden only to God's will and her own conscience, Smithson often tread on the margins of society and the church, working throughout her long life to "bring good news to the poor" and raise her voice for the voiceless. She was an unforgettable real-life hero who followed God's call regardless of the power structures stacked against her as a Black woman. At its core, Sister Sandra provides a unique look at the life and work of an African American nun during times of tumultuous change in both the American and the global South. It weaves together an intimate personal narrative of Smithson's life while also documenting the Black Catholic history of Nashville, making this text a singular and essential resource on Catholic Church history in Tennessee, the South, and the US as a whole.

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