St. Frances Academy

More than thirty years before the Civil War, when blacks and women were generally viewed as property, Father James Joubert and Elizabeth Lange founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence, a religious order of black women dedicated to educating the children of their race and the first order of black nuns anywhere in the world. The women began their novitiate in 1828, and that same year established St. Frances Academy, now the oldest existing school for blacks in Maryland. Joubert, a French Sulpician priest who had come to Baltimore from Haiti, became involved in black religious education at St. Mary’s Seminary. Lange, an educated young black woman who had also fled the turmoil in Haiti, settled in Baltimore in the Catholic, French-speaking area of present-day Seton Hill. Distressed by the lack of educational opportunities for blacks, she conducted a school in her home for nearly ten years, assisted by another Caribbean refugee, Marie Magdeleine Balas, until lack of funds forced it to close. Shortly afterward, Joubert proposed establishing a new school secured by the creation of a black female teaching order, and the two women eagerly accepted. Under his spiritual direction, a small community of black women was organized in June 1828, and in 1829 the women took their vows in the chapel of St. Mary’s Seminary. Despite financial difficulties and sporadic violence from a hostile community, the convent and school survived with help in turn from the Sulpicians, Redemptorists, Jesuits, and Josephites. In 1870 the convent and school moved to this building, designed by George Frederick, architect of Baltimore City Hall.

Baltimore, Maryland · United States