Launched Fall 2004 in partnership with Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York, this Project portends to be the first of its kind. It will make an enormous contribution in the collection of ethnographic information about a population that has been underrepresented and little researched in prior decades: the first ordained and/or elected African American clergywomen. From a historical perspective, clergywomen such as Leontine T.C. Kelly and Barbara Harris were among the first racially identified women to be elected as bishops in white mainline denominations. Bishop Harris broke the “stained” glass ceiling of being elected the first female in the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. Concomitantly, Katie Geneva Cannon was the first African American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Bishop Vashti McKenzie was the first female bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, given its 213-year history in the black community. In following the call of God upon their lives, these women, and many more unnamed and unknown women, emerge as history maker in the African American and mainline church communities. Their journey that culminated in such sweeping accomplishments cannot be lost to posterity but must be remembered as an oral history to pass on to succeeding generations of women, and also men, seeking to fulfill God’s call upon their lives. Herein enters the National African American Clergywomen Oral History Project. |
