Sister Antona Ebo
Sister Antona Ebo. On Sunday March 7, 1965, Alabama state troopers and local police beat and bloodied civil rights activists who had begun a 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital. Immediately following the “Bloody Sunday” attack, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. issued a call for church leaders around the country to come to Selma and to join in the struggle for civil rights. On March 10th, Sister Antona Ebo, a Franciscan Sister of Mary, took off from Saint Louis, Missouri to Selma on a chartered plane that she jokes had been pulled out of mothballs. On March 11th the cover of The New York Times featured a photo of Sister Antona marching alongside other protesters. That photo would become an iconic image of the struggle for voting rights.
Download our resource to learn more. Resources included in this download:
- Educational resources: A Biography of Sister Antona Ebo with questions for reflection and discussion; More Black Catholic Women Witnesses of Mercy with questions for reflection and discussion; A brief history of African-American Catholics; The Black Lives Matter Movement and Catholics: Two Scholars Speak Out; Black Catholic Sisters in the United States: A Historical Reflection by Shannen Dee Williams; and Excerpts from Catholic Social Teaching on Race and Racism with questions for discussion and reflection
- Be a Witness of Mercy: Resources for learning and doing
- Prayer Resources: Stations of the Cross: Black Catholic Women Give Witness
- Original Art by Marcy Hall, commissioned by FutureChurch