Stuart Center

05/30/2023

We invite all of our friends and partners to hold vigil on Friday, June 2 -- as individuals or as groups/households/communities -- with "Lifting Our Light in the Darkness," a Prayer Service for National Gun Violence Awareness Day. The prayer service is adaptable for use by individuals or communities. Download materials at bit.ly/NAGV-June2.

04/24/2023

04/03/2023

Today, April 3, is the 55th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's final speech, "I've been to the mountaintop," delivered at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. He would be assassinated the very next day.

Take a moment and listen now:

"I've Been to the Mountaintop" is the last speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. King spoke on April 3, 1968, at the Mason Temple (Church of God in Chri...

02/23/2023

Our Black History Month "Live from the Archive" starts in about one hour! Tune in for our conversation with provincial archivist Carolyn Osiek RSCJ, live from the Provincial Archives here in St. Louis.

Learn more and register for the link here: https://stuartcenter.org/webform/BHM2023

02/17/2023

Join us this Sunday, February 19 at 7 pm Eastern (6p Central / 5p Mountain / 4p Pacific) for our Black History Virtual Prayer Service: “Enslavement, Dignity, Healing and Justice.”

We gather as a Sacred Heart family during Black History Month to pray in a special way for those women and men in our Province's own history who were enslaved by the Society, whose hands built the foundations of many of our institutions in the United States. We speak their names and pay tribute to their memory. We recognize the great debt owed to these individuals, their families, and their descendants – both a debt of gratitude for their immeasurable contributions, and a debt of repair for the grave sins committed against them by the Society. We recognize the ways in which this history continues to shape the truth of our present, and we pray for a renewed commitment to racial justice in our hearts, our communities, our institutions, our nation, and our world.

Learn more and register on our website: https://stuartcenter.org.

02/15/2023

Today in "Unsung (S)heroes of Black History:"
Maggie Lena Walker

Whether or not a person considers Maggie Lena Walker to be “unsung” may depend on how much time that person has spent in the city of Richmond, Virginia. Walker’s birthplace and hometown owes much to this turn-of-the-century self-made millionaire, who was, at the time, among the foremost female businesswomen in America, as well as the first Black woman bank president in the US.

Raised in Richmond by her formerly enslaved mother and stepfather, Walker grew up working alongside her mother as a laundress. She attended school to become a teacher, then left teaching after her marriage to Armstead Walker, a successful brick contractor. She established a number of businesses in Richmond, including a community insurance company for women. In 1903, she founded and became the first president of the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, making her the first African-American woman to charter a bank in the United States. The bank, now called The Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, was one of a few to survive the Great Depression and is still in operation today.

From the age of 14, Walker was an active member of the Independent Order of St. Luke’s, a philanthropic organization which provided mutual aid to Black residents of Richmond. Throughout the course of her life, she became an important leader in the organization, serving as publisher for the organization’s weekly newspaper and helping it to grow in both numbers and influence. She also held leadership positions in other civic organizations, including the board of the Virginia Industrial School for Girls, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Walker’s house in Richmond is run by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site. You can visit the site online here: https://www.nps.gov/mawa/index.htm.

This , let us remember the role played by those civic leaders, volunteers, and philanthropists whose work for the common good supports the growth and stability of our communities – those who we remember by name, and those whose primary recognition is in the fruit of their efforts over time.




Don’t forget! Join us for our Black History Month virtual events on February 19 and 23!
Learn more and register on our website: https://stuartcenter.org.

02/13/2023

Today in "Unsung (S)heroes of Black History:"
Mary Ann Camberton Shadd Cary, 1823-1893

Called "one of the era's most insightful commentators,"* Mary Ann Shadd Cary spent her life in fierce advocacy for the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and civil rights in both the United States and Canada. She was editor of the weekly newspaper “The Provincial Freeman,” a southern Ontario paper advocating equality, integration and self-education for Black residents of Canada and the United States.

Cary was born free in Delaware in 1823 to a family who was involved in the Underground Railroad assisting those fleeing slavery. She was educated in Pennsylvania and began a career as a teacher. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, she relocated to Canada along with her family, where she established herself as the country's first female newspaper publisher (and the first Black woman to publish a newspaper anywhere in North America). She returned to the United States during the American Civil War where she helped recruit soldiers for the Union Army and continued working for civil rights in a variety of arenas. She graduated from Howard University Law School at the age of 60, becoming the second Black woman in the United States to receive a law degree.

This , let us remember all those who chose "wearing out" over "rusting out" in order to make progress possible.




*Citation: Martha S. Jones, "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All" (New York: Basic Books, 2020) -- in this book, Dr. Jones provides an excellent picture of the extraordinary contributions of Mary Ann Shadd Cary to the cause of civil rights.

02/11/2023

Today is designated by the United Nations as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Our “Unsung (S)hero of Black History” for today is, therefore, biochemist Marie Maynard Daly, Ph.D.

In 1947, Dr. Daly became the first Black woman in the US to earn a doctoral degree in chemistry. Her career was characterized by cutting–edge research in the health sciences that helped uncover the link between high cholesterol and clogged arteries, the deleterious effects of sugar and smoking on health, the importance of kidney function on metabolism, and other important implications about how diet and lifestyle affect health.

Daly found direct experimental evidence that protein synthesis requires RNA; a discovery important enough that she was directly cited by James Watson in the lecture he gave after receiving the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. Daly also identified a new type of histones and determined the distribution of different nitrogenous bases within nucleic acids (what we now call DNA and RNA).

Daly established a scholarship fund for Black American science students at Queens College in 1988.

This , we honor the work of Black scientists who have contributed to our collective understanding of the world. This , we honor the work of women scientists who have broken barriers and improved our world in important ways. And we recognize our community’s ongoing responsibility to cultivate knowledge and interest in the sciences among all our young people, especially those who continue to be underrepresented in the sciences.

02/10/2023

Today in "Unsung (S)heroes of Black History:"
Rebecca Lee Crumpler, MD.

Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler received her medical degree just before the end of the Civil War, the first African American woman to do so in the US. Much of her career was spent providing medical care to formerly enslaved patients who were denied care by white physicians. She treated her patients regardless of their ability to pay, and became a successful physician despite the many barriers erected by racism and white supremacy, including difficulties convincing pharmacists to fill her prescriptions, racist and sexist ridicule from other doctors, and systemic denial of admitting privileges to local hospitals. Dr. Crumpler’s 1883 book, “A Book of Medical Discourses,” with its focus on treating the health needs of women and children, is believed to be the first medical text written by an African American author.

Dr. Crumpler's efforts were desperately needed in a time when her Black patients were denied the access to health care they needed. To this day, Black patients’ health outcomes across North America continue to lag behind those of many other social groups, and studies show that Black patients fare better overall when they receive care from Black physicians, yet the number of Black people receiving medical degrees continues to be very small, and the number of Black women doctors smaller still.

In the United States, Black women represent less than 3% of all practicing physicians, a number that is considerably lower in Canada. This , let’s support health equity for everyone by supporting initiatives that improve access for Black women to follow in Dr. Crumpler’s footsteps and become health care leaders in our communities.

02/08/2023

February 8 is the Feast of St. Josephine Bakhita, patron saint of those who have been victimized by human trafficking and enslavement. Kidnapped and sold into slavery as a child in Sudan, St. Josephine Bakhita suffered tremendous cruelty at the hands of several enslavers before seizing her own freedom with the support of the Italian courts and Canossian Sisters, whom she had befriended while in Italy. She entered the Canossians in 1893 and spent the rest of her life in Italy, where she became widely known for her gentleness, hospitality and holiness. She was canonized in 2000.

We pray today for all who have been trafficked:
Their bodies abused, their agency stolen, their labor exploited,
Both those alive today, and those who inhabit our own history.
Let their cries rise to God who sees their suffering and comes to their aid.
May they know freedom and peace.

We pray for those who have committed the evil of human trafficking:
Those who have stolen, abused, and exploited others,
Both those alive today and those who inhabit our own history.
Let their crimes be spoken aloud to allow healing and restitution;
May they and their descendants work to repair the harm they have done,
To create conditions of freedom and peace.

We pray for our communities, our leaders, and ourselves:
Those who have the power to intervene, to stop this evil, to heal this harm.
Let us do the work of justice.
May we be the bearers of freedom and peace.

Amen.