This 1956 photo shows Sister Cora Marie Billings, now of Richmond, center, who was 17 at the time and became the first Black nun admitted into the Sisters of Mercy in Philadelphia. Later, she was the first Black nun to teach in a Catholic high school in Philadelphia and was a co-founder of the National Black Sisters’ Conference in the 1960s.
Stories this photo appears in:
Black Catholic nuns: A compelling, long-overlooked history
Even as a young adult, Shannen Dee Williams – who grew up Black and Catholic in Memphis, Tenn.,–knew of only one Black nun, and a fake one at that: Sister Mary Clarence, as played by Whoopi Goldberg in the comic film “Sister Act.”
