When I was a child in Canton, Mississippi, my people sang the songs of faith - songs of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Moses, David and Jesus ... I did not realize that I was receiving a religious education, that I was being taught prayer, salvation history, morals and values, faith, hope, love and joy.
A liturgist and an artist, Sr. Thea used the gift of her singing voice to familiarize people with black spiritual songs and to bring more of the black traditions into the Catholic Church in the United States.
In 1984, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which soon spread to her bones. As the cancer progressed, she continued her mission - in a wheelchair for the last two years of her life. In 1989, she attended the annual U.S. Catholic bishops' meeting. She challenged them to celebrate the gifts of black Catholics, and led them in singing, "We shall overcome."
Sr. Thea died of cancer March 30, 1990. She was 52.
- Little Blue Book, Diocese of Saginaw