The Other Women’s Movement

 

So I was cleaning up some items from my mom’s room a couple months back, and I came across her Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart Nursing School graduation picture, Class of ’47. There she is, donned in her starched white nurse’s cap, along with a few other dozen graduates, including one of her best friends for life, Connie (“Aunt Connie,” to us kids). I brought it up to her room, where she’s currently, at 91, confined to her bed due to severe arthritis and osteoporosis, to remind her of that wonderful time in her life.

Fast forward to today, where I’m texting back and forth with an old college friend about the new movie Chappaquiddick. We get into the details, some of which I never realized. (I was not yet five at the time it happened.) Anyway, in the digital discussion I mention my mom attended Manhattanville at the same time as one of the Kennedy daughters, Jean, I believe, and that Ethel Kennedy, then Skakel, was also a classmate.

As I’m browsing the various Kennedy biographies on Wikipedia, I note that Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy also attended Manhattanville. My grandmother Elaine attended there too, but later than Rose, so there seems to be some interweaving of the two families. (My grandfather actually proposed to my grandmother in the school parlor.) All this is less interesting than what I discovered later in linking to the history of Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart. An excerpt:

In the 1930s, the Manhattanville student body consisted of approximately 200 female students. Though small, the college made headlines across the country for taking a strong position promoting racial equality decades before the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1950s, into the 1960s and 1970s. In May 1933, students created the “Manhattanville Resolutions” a document that pledged an active student commitment to racial justice. This commitment was tested when the first “Negro” (the then-current term, now Black or African-American) woman student was admitted to the college in 1938. Alumnae response to an racially integrated but all-female student body was mixed and somewhat controversial for a time. While the vast majority of letters praised Manhattanville for its courageous action, College President Grace Dammann, RSCJ, viewed the negative responses as an opportunity to open hearts and minds. At the annual Class Day reunion on May 31, 1938, she delivered a passionate speech entitled “Principles Versus Prejudices.” She stated that education is the key to rising above prejudices.

“The more we know of man’s doing and thinking throughout time and throughout the world’s extent, the more we understand that beauty and goodness and truth are not the monopoly of any age nor of any group nor of any race.

The speech went on to be published in several national publications and established Manhattanville as a leader in higher education and human rights. When President Dammann died suddenly in 1945, The New York Times obituary summarized her life’s work with the headline, “Mother Dammann, College President: Head of Manhattanville Since 1930 Dies–Champion of Racial Equality.” Manhattanville would continue its work in social action first through the National Federation of Catholic College Students and to this day with the Duchesne Center for Religion and Social Justice and the Connie Hogarth Center for Social Action.

Geez, I thought, you don’t hear of this kind of thing too often: A group of nuns who ran an elite school, decades before it was “woke” to be for civil rights, took a courageous stand when it could have really cost them something. What a pleasant surprise! (And what a nice change of pace from all the awful stuff that’s gotten dredged up about Catholicism of late.)

My mom had always spoken highly of the school (back before they dropped the “of the Sacred Heart”). She’d gotten the best education from the most wonderful group of nuns who treated these young women like their own daughters and prepared them for life in so many ways. (If you watch the HBO documentary on Ethel Kennedy, you get some sense of that.) My mom continued to correspond with her mentor from Manhattanville, Mother Williams, many decades later. And my mom always attributed the inspiration those nuns provided as what spurred her to get involved in something outside the narrow confines of her own suburban life, in my mom’s case, the pro-life movement. It’s hard not to feel we lost something when we lost those religious women. Hats off to ya, ladies, in this month dedicated to Women’s History!

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  1. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    Hey coincidence! My mother graduated from Manhattanville too. Probably around 1939 or 40. Thanks for the post!

    • #1
  2. La Tapada Member
    La Tapada
    @LaTapada

    Interesting post!

    • #2
  3. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    Lovely essay. There are still some good Catholic colleges and universities out there in the United States. The university I  attended was a sister school to Notre Dame. About a third of the student body to this day is enrolled in ROTC, both Army and Air Force. Notre Dame for all its’ problems still has a high participation rate in Navy, Air Force, and Army ROTC. Military service is still encouraged, and respected on both campuses. The commissioning ceremony at both schools is reported, and not hidden from public view. Students that are on active duty are featured in their alumni magazines.

    I have fond memories of the Nuns during my elementary school days, as well as great respect for the Brothers, and Priests during my boys Catholic high school days, and my university days.

    Perhaps this sign posted at the front door of a boys Catholic high school sums it up for me:

     

    • #3
  4. JustmeinAZ Member
    JustmeinAZ
    @JustmeinAZ

    This is fascinating! How times have changed.

    • #4
  5. She Member
    She
    @She

    PedroIg: And my mom always attributed the inspiration those nuns provided as what spurred her to get involved in something outside the narrow confines of her own suburban life, in my mom’s case, the pro-life movement. It’s hard not to feel we lost something when we lost those religious women. Hats off to ya, ladies, in this month dedicated to Women’s History!

    Agreed.  Thanks for a great post about these wonderful women.  Yes, the world is a poorer place without them.  Such a nun loomed large in Mr. She’s life, except that she taught the children of steelworkers in a gritty little Catholic school in Pittsburgh in the early 1950s.  I wrote a post about her some time ago which, oddly enough, was called The Other Woman.

    Just like the ladies you describe, Sr. Janet was fearless, and in one of the comments, I told the story of how she and her sister nuns, in the summers when they weren’t teaching school in Pittsburgh, would travel to the South (usually around New Orleans) and teach in all-black colleges during the time of segregation. Our Sister Janet simply refused to have anything to do with any of that, and insisted in sitting in the back of the bus, behind the dividing “Coloreds” sign. She was regularly chastised for this, by the drivers and the other passengers, but pretended to be deaf. (She is now extremely deaf, so this is, as she pointed out herself, quite funny). One day, though, she had had enough, and in the faces of a particularly annoying couple who were telling her that she was required, by the government to sit in the front of the bus, she shouted (her word) at them, “I DISOBEY THE GOVERNMENT!” walked to the back of the bus, and sat down there again. She did this for years. No one ever laid a finger on her.

    She died last year, at the age of 99.  I miss her.

    • #5
  6. Scott Wilmot Member
    Scott Wilmot
    @ScottWilmot

    PedroIg: It’s hard not to feel we lost something when we lost those religious women

    Our four children went to Catholic grade school and their favorite teaches were Sister Scholastica and Sister Marian Grace, the only two sisters teaching at the school. This is an interesting report on US Women Religious.

    The good news is there still are young women who feel called to serve the Church in the particular vocation of religious life, not out of nostalgia, but because they recognize the beauty and joy of this vocation as it is lived in the classic orders. Like the sisters of the 20th century who played such a vital role in building up the Catholic Church in the United States, they are less concerned about statistics than about embracing the vows to follow Jesus Christ.

    If the witness of these sisters can become more visible, the first half of this century could experience a growth in the sisterhood similar to that of the 20th century. However, whether 21st-century sisters number in the thousands or the tens of thousands, their predecessors have proven that sisters can work miracles when they respond to the Holy Spirit moving in our world, and this contemporary world is desperately in need of miracles.

    • #6
  7. PedroIg Member
    PedroIg
    @PedroIg

    She (View Comment):

    PedroIg: And my mom always attributed the inspiration those nuns provided as what spurred her to get involved in something outside the narrow confines of her own suburban life, in my mom’s case, the pro-life movement. It’s hard not to feel we lost something when we lost those religious women. Hats off to ya, ladies, in this month dedicated to Women’s History!

    Agreed. Thanks for a great post about these wonderful women. Yes, the world is a poorer place without them. Such a nun loomed large in Mr. She’s life, except that she taught the children of steelworkers in a gritty little Catholic school in Pittsburgh in the early 1950s. I wrote a post about her some time ago which, oddly enough, was called The Other Woman.

    Just like the ladies you describe, Sr. Janet was fearless, and in one of the comments, I told the story of how she and her sister nuns, in the summers when they weren’t teaching school in Pittsburgh, would travel to the South (usually around New Orleans) and teach in all-black colleges during the time of segregation. Our Sister Janet simply refused to have anything to do with any of that, and insisted in sitting in the back of the bus, behind the dividing “Coloreds” sign. She was regularly chastised for this, by the drivers and the other passengers, but pretended to be deaf. (She is now extremely deaf, so this is, as she pointed out herself, quite funny). One day, though, she had had enough, and in the faces of a particularly annoying couple who were telling her that she was required, by the government to sit in the front of the bus, she shouted (her word) at them, “I DISOBEY THE GOVERNMENT!” walked to the back of the bus, and sat down there again. She did this for years. No one ever laid a finger on her.

    She died last year, at the age of 99. I miss her.

    Yes, I do recall that post, @She.  Very touching indeed!  One thing I didn’t mention in my post, for fear of waxing philosophical, was the humility aspect of all of this.  These women who fought for the “least among us” didn’t see it as some chic cause to gather attention to themselves.  It was all about the oppressed person.  There was no “intersectionality” or any of that nonsense being pushed as some agenda.  It was “mere Christianity,” as C.S. Lewis might say.  Had the current incarnation of the Women’s Movement followed that path, the results would have been a lot different, I suspect.  Thanks again for your kind words and the link to your “sister” story.  We owe them so much!

    • #7
  8. PedroIg Member
    PedroIg
    @PedroIg

    Scott Wilmot (View Comment):

    PedroIg: It’s hard not to feel we lost something when we lost those religious women

    Our four children went to Catholic grade school and their favorite teaches were Sister Scholastica and Sister Marian Grace, the only two sisters teaching at the school. This is an interesting report on US Women Religious.

    The good news is there still are young women who feel called to serve the Church in the particular vocation of religious life, not out of nostalgia, but because they recognize the beauty and joy of this vocation as it is lived in the classic orders. Like the sisters of the 20th century who played such a vital role in building up the Catholic Church in the United States, they are less concerned about statistics than about embracing the vows to follow Jesus Christ.

    If the witness of these sisters can become more visible, the first half of this century could experience a growth in the sisterhood similar to that of the 20th century. However, whether 21st-century sisters number in the thousands or the tens of thousands, their predecessors have proven that sisters can work miracles when they respond to the Holy Spirit moving in our world, and this contemporary world is desperately in need of miracles.

    That’s very good news, @Scott Wilmot!  And thanks for your kind words.  Never underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit!

    • #8
  9. PedroIg Member
    PedroIg
    @PedroIg

    Doug Watt (View Comment):
    Lovely essay. There are still some good Catholic colleges and universities out there in the United States. The university I attended was a sister school to Notre Dame. About a third of the student body to this day is enrolled in ROTC, both Army and Air Force. Notre Dame for all its’ problems still has a high participation rate in Navy, Air Force, and Army ROTC. Military service is still encouraged, and respected on both campuses. The commissioning ceremony at both schools is reported, and not hidden from public view. Students that are on active duty are featured in their alumni magazines.

    I have fond memories of the Nuns during my elementary school days, as well as great respect for the Brothers, and Priests during my boys Catholic high school days, and my university days.

    Perhaps this sign posted at the front door of a boys Catholic high school sums it up for me:

    Thanks, @Doug Watt!  If we’re lucky, as we get older, we get wiser.  Part of that wisdom is gratitude, something quite evident in your reflection.

    • #9
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