Sister Sandra: A Black Catholic Nun and the Struggle for Equality in Church and Community

Sister Sandra Smithson, a Black Franciscan nun from Tennessee, lived her extraordinary life on the forefront of change.A passionate educator, she was committed to working directly with disadvantaged students and strived to reform local and national education policy to better serve these children until her death in 2022 at age 96.Smithson first joined the School Sisters of St. Francis in 1954, one of the only orders of nuns who accepted African American women at the time, and made it her mission to challenge the status quo in her community and her church, even when it put her at great personal risk.In Sister Sandra by Theresa Laurence, Smithson's expansive life and legacy is recorded for the first time, from her educational ministry in South America, to cofounding a nonprofit in Middle Tennessee that served children and advocated for policy change in public education. Thoughtful, opinionated, and beholden only to God's will and her own conscience, Smithson often tread on the margins of