The First Black Dominican Sisters in Natal (1922–39)

This book uncovers the rarely spoken about history of race relations in a South African congregation of Roman Catholic religious women, which remains painful and contested to this day. A group of black sisters was compelled to leave the Newcastle Congregation of the Dominican Sisters in 1939 and join the newly founded Montebello Congregation, a congregation for black sisters only, without any consultation. A first group of black women had joined the Oakford Congregation in 1922. They eventually split from Oakford and constituted the Montebello Congregation in 1939. A second group of black women from Umsinsini on the South Coast of Natal had joined the Newcastle Congregation in 1927 and the following years. Philippe Denis traces the history of these two groups in the 1920s and 1930s. He argues that two types of racial segregation took place: institutional, with the gradual separation of the black sisters from the white sisters; and practical, for those who still lived in common but ate, slept and prayed separately. Denis uses rich archival sources from London, Rome, Johannesburg, Durban and Montebello, as well as interviews with black sisters who had heard the group from Newcastle telling their stories in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He also pays attention to the interface of racial and gender dynamics in the story.