Pictured: Rev. Augustine Tolton, the first black Roman Catholic priest in the United States

Celebrate Black History Month at Caldwell College

The Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF) and Campus Ministry will present BLACK NUNS IN THE ‘60s AND ‘70s: AN UNTOLD STORY OF THE BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE IN THE U.S. CATHOLIC CHURCH with Shannen Dee Williams,Ph.D Candidate, Rutgers University on Monday February 8, 2010 from 12 noon to 1 p.m. in the Academic Building Lecture Hall.

A special Black History Month jazz performance by Flute Juice Productions will be held on February 19, 2010 from 3 to 4 p.m. in the Student Center Upper Lounge. The Event is sponsored by the Educational Opportunity Fund & the Black Student Cooperative Union. Light Refreshments Will Be Served,

Shannen Dee Williams is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She earned a B.A. (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in history from Agnes Scott College in 2004 and a M.A. in Afro-American studies from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2006. She is currently working on her dissertation, “Subversive Habits: Black Nuns and the Struggle to Desegregate Catholic America after World War I.” Her project chronicles the saga of three generations of African-American Catholic women religious in their quest for racial and educational justice in the twentieth century.

Ms. Williams has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Ralph J. Bunche Fellowship from Rutgers University, the 2008 Drusilla Dunjee Houston Memorial Award for Best Graduate Essay in History from the Association of Black Women Historians, and the 2009 John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award from the American Catholic Historical Association. Ms. Williams is a cradle Catholic and a native of Memphis, Tennessee.