Thea Bowman

She was born Bertha Bowman in Yazoo City, Mississippi, in 1937. Her grandfather had been born a slave but her father was a physician and her mother a teacher. She was raised in a Methodist home but, with her parents' permission, converted to the Roman Catholic faith at the age of nine and later joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Bowman attended Viterbo University, run by her congregation, and earned a B.A. in English in 1965.[2] She went on to attend The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where she earned a M.A. in English in 1969 and a Ph.D. in English in 1972, writing her doctoral thesis on Thomas More.[3][4]

Bowman taught at an elementary school in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and then at a high school in Canton, Mississippi. She later taught at her alma maters, Viterbo College in La Crosse and the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., as well as at Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana.[2]

In his book Eleven Modern Mystics, Victor M. Parachin, a meditation teacher, notes her impact upon Catholic liturgical music in providing an intellectual, spiritual, historical, and cultural foundation for developing and legitimizing a distinct worship form for Black Catholics. Bowman had explained: "When we understand our history and culture, then we can develop the ritual, the music and the devotional expression that satisfy us in the Church." [5]

Bowman became instrumental in the publication in 1987 of a new Catholic hymnal, Lead Me, Guide Me: The African American Catholic Hymnal, the first such work directed to the Black community. James P. Lyke, Auxiliary Bishop of Cleveland (also an African-American), coordinated the hymnal project, saying it was born of the needs and aspirations of Black Catholics. Bowman was actively involved in helping select hymns to be included. The hymnal includes an essay that she wrote, titled "The Gift of African American Sacred Song." In it, she says, "Black sacred song is soulful song" and then describes it in these five ways:

1. holistic: challenging the full engagement of mind, imagination, memory, feeling, emotion, voice, and body;
2. participatory: inviting the worshiping community to join in contemplation, in celebration and in prayer;
3. real: celebrating the immediate concrete reality of the worshiping community – grief or separation, struggle or oppression, determination or joy – bringing that reality to prayer within the community of believers;
4. spirit-filled: energetic, engrossing, intense;
5. life-giving: refreshing, encouraging, consoling, invigorating, sustaining.[6]

Her 1988 albums, Songs of My People and 'Round the Glory Manger, released on stereo audiocassette by the Daughters of St. Paul, were re-released in 2020 for the 30th anniversary of Sister Thea's death under the title, Songs of My People: The Complete Collection.

Immediately before her death, Bowman spoke to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from her wheelchair, and the bishops "powerfully and visibly moved, applauded her. When she finished they stood linking arms and singing as Thea led them in the spiritual, 'We Shall Overcome'."[10] Harry Belafonte met her in Mississippi in 1989 hoping to do a film on her life.[11] Less than a week before her death, the University of Notre Dame announced that it would award Bowman the 1990 Laetare Medal. It was presented posthumously at the 1990 commencement exercises.[12] She died of cancer on March 30, 1990, aged 52, in Canton, Mississippi, and was buried with her parents in Memphis, Tennessee.[13] The 25th anniversary of her death brought forth, again, numerous tributes.[14][15]

Boston College instituted the Thea Bowman AHANA and Intercultural Center, which in 2015 inaugurated an annual Thea Bowman Legacy Day. At the inaugural event of the legacy day, the keynote speaker mentioned how Bowman had stressed the importance of education for Blacks, and how she had legitimized a distinct form of worship for Black Catholics.[16]

The Sister Thea Bowman Black Catholic Educational Foundation was established as a legacy of Bowman to raise scholarship money for Blacks, an endeavor Bowman saw as key to raising up the Black people.[17] She conceived of the foundation as early as 1984 and articulated its mission for the students: "Walk with us. Don't walk behind us and don't walk in front of us; walk with us."[18] By 2015 it had put more than 150 African American students through college.[19]

A cause for canonization has been opened for Bowman. She has been designated a Servant of God.[20][21]

At the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' 2018 Fall General Assembly, the Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance indicated unanimous support for the advancement of Sister Thea Bowman's canonization cause on the diocesan level.[22]

• Boston College Thea Bowman AHANA and Intercultural Center[16]
• Thea Bowman Center, Cleveland, Ohio [23][24]
• Thea Bowman Community Health Center, Detroit[25]
• Thea Bowman House, Utica, New York[26]
• Thea Bowman Leadership Academy, Gary, Indiana[27]
• Thea Bowman Residence, Amityville, New York[28]
• Thea Bowman Spirituality Center, Raymond, Mississippi [29]
• Thea Bowman Women's Center, Philadelphia[30]
• Thea House Catholic Campus Ministry Center, Raleigh, NC [31]
• Sister Thea Bowman Academy, Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania[32]
• Sister Thea Bowman Catholic School, Jackson, Mississippi[33]
• Sister Thea Bowman DRVC Gospel Choir, Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York[34]
• Sister Thea Bowman Hall at Loyola University Maryland [35]
• Sister Thea Bowman Grade School, East St. Louis, Illinois[36]
• Sister Thea Bowman Center for Women, Siena College, Loudonville, New York[37]
• Sister Thea Bowman House (Catholic Campus Ministry) at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, North Carolina