Mary Antona Ebo

Ebo was one of the first three black women to join the Sisters of St. Mary in 1946, and became Sister Mary Antona when she took her final vows in 1954. She worked in medical records at Firmin Desloge Hospital from 1955 to 1961,[9] and was director of medical records at St. Mary's Infirmary from 1962 to 1967.[8] In 1967, she was named executive director of St. Clare's Hospital in Baraboo, Wisconsin,[10] the first African-American woman to be head of an American Catholic hospital.[4] In 1974 she was named executive director of the Wisconsin Conference of Catholic Hospitals.[11] She worked at Catholic hospitals in Madison, Wisconsin, and at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.[12] From 1992 to 2008, she was a pastoral associate at St. Nicholas Church in St. Louis.[8]

With encouragement from her mother superior,[13][14] Ebo and five other nuns joined the Martin Luther King's march in Selma in 1965,[15] wearing their orders' full habits.[9][16][17] Ebo's story was included in the documentary Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change (2007).[18] In 1968, Ebo was a founder of the National Black Sisters' Conference, and president of the conference from 1980 to 1982. In 1989, she received the conference's Harriet Tubman Award for service and leadership. She served on the Human Rights Commission of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, and was a member of the Missouri Catholic Conference on Social Concerns.[8]

In 1999, she received the Eucharist from Pope John Paul II, in a group of congregants including Rosa Parks, when the pontiff visited St. Louis. In 2013 she attended a commemoration of the 1965 march and cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge with Congressman John Lewis.[9] In 2014, in her nineties, Ebo gave a message at a prayer service in Ferguson following the death of Michael Brown Jr.[1]