This book uncovers the rarely spoken about history of race relations in a South African congregation of Roman Catholic women religious, 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.
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