Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time

“Meticulous and inspiring scholarship. . . . The greatest contribution of Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time is its sustained attention to race in the prisms of American Catholicism and women’s religious life in the antebellum period.” — Religious Studies Review

“A valuable contribution to African American, American Catholic, and women’s history.” — Journal of American History

“Morrow’s contextually sensitive recovery of the emergence of this distinctive black Catholic institution is a valuable contribution to antebellum religious history.” — Journal of Southern History

“Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time is the latest, most rigorous, and most enlightening account of the Oblate sisterhood.” — Journal of the Early Republic

“In this elegantly written history of the first permanent African American Roman Catholic religious order, Diane Batts Morrow successfully weaves themes drawn from religious, racial, and gender history.” — Journal of American Studies

“Well-written and based on prodigious research, [this book] undoubtedly enhances our general understanding of the antebellum United States. . . . Morrow’s interpretation of race, religion and gender in the Oblate community will challenge historians of U.S. Catholicism who do not attend to race, scholars of African-American religion who ignore Catholics, and historians of American women who refuse to see religious identity as a pathway to female agency.” — American Catholic Studies

“The most significant contribution Morrow makes to American Catholic Studies is her lucid analysis of race and religion in antebellum America. . . . If Morrow’s prodigious research into the community and her ability to contextualize the Oblate experience make reading [this book] an extraordinarily worthwhile scholarly undertaking, her mastery of the English language makes the experience truly a pleasure.” — American Catholic Studies Newsletter

“By blending antebellum, religious, African-American, and women’s history, Morrow uncovers and analyzes critical aspects of the relationships among the sisters, the Catholic Church, and black and white antebellum society.” — American Catholic Studies Newsletter

“A fascinating story about the ways religious identity informs identities of race, gender, and ethnicity and a significant contribution to African American religious history. Diane Batts Morrow’s study of the Oblate Sisters reveals in this unique group of free women of mixed African and French heritage a sisterhood in the Roman Catholic Church, an educational mission to Baltimore’s black community, and a voice of resistance to American racism during the era of slavery.” — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Harvard University

“Many thanks to Diane Batts Morrow for bringing the history of this community to life. Everyone interested in American history or women’s history, black history, or religious history must make room on their shelves for this book.” — Jo Ann Kay McNamara, City University of New York Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia