- Welcome to Cardinal Ritter College Preparatory High School here in St. Louis Missouri for today's HEC TV Live program. History in the first person stories of the civil rights movement. The individual we're gonna meet today, is Sister Mary Antona Ebo, and what you're seeing now are some clips of newspapers which of course to tell some incidents of her fantastic life. You're gonna have a chance to meet this woman, born in 1924, African American nun who's done an amazing thing with her life, both in terms of religious work as well as in terms of her professional work, and we're really excited that you're part of the program today. We're being joined by students here at Cardinal Ritter College Preparatory High School. They'll be asking questions throughout the program and of course as always, we're being joined by interactive groups throughout the country. Some of which you'll see face-to-face, via video conference, some of which are joining us on the web, and some which are joining via television. If you're a web or TV viewer, don't forget that you can email your questions to us, at live@hectv.org that's live@hectv.org. Those questions come to my phone, so I like to hear my phone vibrate and I can ask those as well to Sister Ebo. Hi everybody, I'm Tim Gore. These are the students from Cardinal Ritter, Cardinal Ritter say hello to everybody. And our guest today is Sister Mary Antona Ebo. Sister Ebo thanks so much for being with us this morning. - Well I'm happy to be here, thank you. - So just to give the students a little bit of background information, talk about your order. You're a member of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary now. - [Sister Antona] Yes. - Is that right? Talk a little bit about that. - Well we have the name Franciscan Sisters of Mary but our originally our name was Sisters of St. Mary of the third order of St. Frances and then in 1989 we completed the re-foundation of the order by a group of sisters that came back to the order that had started their own order out in Maryville, Missouri. And at that particular time, when everything was completed the next thing was, what do we call ourselves? And it really wasn't too nice to think of them as prodigal daughters coming home, so we took a part of their name and a part of the name that we originally had which also goes with the SSM health care system that system uses the initials that we used to have, SSM. And so we became the Franciscan Sisters of Mary and that was the end of that title. - That maybe where you are today, but obviously when you were born in 1924 and growing up in Bloomingdale Illinois, that probably wasn't what you were thinking about when you were gonna turn 88 years old. - No I was a happy little Baptist. And I still am, some people call me Baptic. For a combination of Catholic and Baptist. - So give the students an idea, of what was Bloomington Illinois, like for you back in the 1920s? - That's a long way back you know. - [Tim] Go in the time machine. - Actually you could walk across Bloomington from one side to the other. We walked most of the time to school. There were no such things as school buses. We just walked and of course we went through the regular channels of racism and that was a part of our upbringing also to know where you could go and where you were not welcome. - Where did you go to school and what were your favorite subjects as a kid in school? - Actually, in elementary school, we just went to regular program but that was one of the questions that almost, almost put me in a mode not to enter the order, because that was the main question that the mother general asked me was 'Where did you go to school?" And she was somewhat amazed in the atmosphere of St. Louis of divided schools and so forth. Segregation, that we just went to school, the neighborhood school. In high school we went to Bloomingdale high school, but because I was raised, when my dad became ill, my mother died, and when my dad being much older was left with three small children, we were placed in a children's home and it was the years of the depression, 1929 and following and at that particular time, we were being placed in programs, that were preparing us to be housemaids, and my brother was in a course called manual arts and those kinds of things, but his tendency was to want to be an architect. - I want to take a moment to look at this picture we've got up here and let you demonstrate to the kids that this is you and your sister and brother from a picture in front of the children's home back in the early 1930s right? - [Sister Antona] Yes. - [Tim] And you are the young girl sitting what would be second from the right as we look at the picture? - [Sister Antona] Second from, yes, second from the right. - [Tim] As we look at the picture. - [Sister Antona] Yes in the front row. - [Tim] And that's your sister next to you? - - [Sister Antona] And my sister is first in that row and right behind my sister is my brother Walter. - Was it a good experience growing up? - It was a good experience but strangely enough about a year ago, I received a phone call from a young woman in Springfield Illinois and she had been at the children's home during her generation. The home has been destroyed since then, but it was a good experience, even to the point in which at nine years old I heard a Methodist woman preaching and I said, she really didn't teach me that much about loving Jesus, but she did scare me enough that I decided I was gonna take out an insurance policy on heaven and I made sure that my Aunt Mary knew that I was going to be baptized and join the Baptist church and now I heard the Methodist lady preaching but I was going to go and join the Methodist, the Baptist church where we always worshiped. - [Tim] It's always good to have a little bit of insurance. - Yeah and for that I didn't want to miss out on heaven, because I knew that when my mom died, she didn't come back and didn't get a second chance and a little boy in the first grade had died and he didn't come back so people were not coming back for a second chance and I was gonna make sure that I would be ready if, I mean you know, if somebody dies in the first grade then there was always a possibility that in the third grade I could be called on too and I wanted to make sure that I got into heaven. But the thing about that little incident in life was the fact that I did not hesitate to go to Mr Calinese on that picture, he was over the home, he and his wife and at that particular time, I told them that I was actually going to join church on that next Sunday and then I was baptized as a Baptist. - [Tim] Very cool. - Later I learned about the Catholic church but I have to say that, that's where I learned about some of the not so nice things that we do to one another when we have differences. - [Tim] Well that's a great segue moment, 'cause we've got a couple of questions where kids are asking you to talk about that. So I want to go to St. George school in Erie, Pennsylvania 'cause Emily she wants to know what kinds of segregation did you experience growing up? - Segregation for us, was like going to Woolworths and ordering a hamburger and even Woolworths in St.Louis I think is out of business now. - [Tim] It is yes. - But at that time, it was if you went with a white friend, they would bring out the hamburger on a plate and if you were the only one that was there and it was just a couple of you, you got the brown bag treatment and the question I remember in high school, how my brother was in the South Pacific in the military fighting for our freedoms. I went in to this Woolworths and I got the brown bag and my friend got a nice plate and a hamburger and the question was from her, "well what is the brown bag for?" and of course the brown bag was to let me know that we didn't serve colored in that store and so we both just got up and walked out. Sometimes you have, so-called friends, but they're more acquaintances than friends and at that particular time, the acquaintances will sit there and look like they don't know what to do. I had no hesitancy about whether or not I was gonna pay for that hamburger. - [Tim] So you were welcome, we've got a couple of email questions from our website. You had definitely white friends growing up, you were welcomed by both kinds in Bloomington? - Oh yeah. Well I mean, see I'm talking about school. And school friends were just friends. There was no segregation there. My segregated experience began when as a young adult I wanted to attend the school of nursing in Bloomington and because I had become a Catholic I wanted to go to a Catholic school and I was told by the sister in charge, "you know we've never taken a colored girl here before" And the conversation did not go around with what kind of grades are you making, or how did you get along with the other students at Holy Trinity High School? None of those things, or how is your health? None of those things became a part of the conversation. It was just the color of my skin that made the difference, the conversation ended with, don't call us I mean, my understanding was, don't call us we'll call you and that call never came. But the pastor who baptized me Catholic became very indignant when he learned that I had discovered that there was a school of nursing in St. Louis where I could go, but that too was segregated and it was not, we were not, St. Louis University was not taking African American students at that time. It was the middle 40s when they began to take African American students. So all of those things, it just, it developed and you became aware of the differences as graduation from elementary school to high school, and I had one little boyfriend, named Robert McQuarter and there used to be a soapy called Betty and Bob and I was Betty and he was Bob. But when we reached high school, Bob didn't know me anymore. Those are the kind of things that you carry those kinds of bruises. You know when people say, "Well nobody was hurt" Well maybe nobody was physically bruised, but psychologically you carry those things with you. - So I wanna go to Hinckley Minnesota right now because they've got a follow up question. Ms Hinckley you've got a question, about growing up and the way prejudice might have shaped Sister Ebo. Take it away Hinckley. - How did growing up in a time where prejudice was abundant shape you as a person? - So how do you think you were shaped as a person, dealing with those kinds of experiences that kind of prejudice? - Well my one example, that stands out in my mind now was, my preparation for Selma, as distinct from the preparation that the other five other sisters had, they were all Caucasians and for me, it was a matter that I didn't have to be told what was going on in Selma. I didn't even know where Selma was to start with, but when I found out where it was and what was going on, I was ready to, okay if I didn't have that full habit on, then I would be down there with my people. And that was the statement that I had made on Monday morning after the Bloody Sunday and then the other sisters, people would say to them "you're not prepared, you don't know what's going on" I think they were prepared but their preparation was not quite as bruising as mine had been. Because I still carry that apprehension about who were my friends and who could be trusted and why should I trust this person and not the other person? And those were the questions that surfaced, will you be my friend for good, or are you going to be one of these wishy washy persons that it doesn't take long before I know that you're not sincere about this relationship. - If we go back in time a little bit to the time of nursing school, so we begin to see how this experience shapes you. A question comes from St.George school in Erie Pennsylvania about dealing with that as well, that I think could be part of, as we move into talking about the order. So St. George I'm gonna go to you for Kirsten's question. Hi Kirsten. The question that she asks, is "What kept you going?" So nursing schools are rejecting you, you're dealing with these kinds of situations, what kept you going? - Okay, remember you're talking to somebody that has been, a convert to Catholicism and I also need to remind you of my Baptist upbringing. The grace of God, kept me going. I knew that there were injustices, excuse me, that I had experienced and that people were still experiencing and then the epitome of it, was with the Selma situation in Bloody Sunday and then going and having people call us dupes of the communist. You see we so frequently give the communists credit for doing the things that we should be doing as Christians and that is the kind of thing that keeps me going, is the fact that I believe it's a part of what Jesus wanted me to be doing. Why I am a Christian to want to share what I have and what I enjoy. Lord I want to be like Jesus, in my heart. And that's one of our spirituals, to be like Jesus. Lord I want to love like Jesus and that was the message. A new commandment I give you, to love one another and that is my responsibility, to do it with intelligence. I've got a brain up here, and I'm expected to use it, to be prepared to meet my brother and my sister and realize that we all come from that same God and that is why when Jesus thought the prayer our Father, it was because we all are children of God and with all the names that I've experienced in these 88 years of colored and negro and black and African American, it seems like we're finally getting around to being who we be and even my own family name E-B-O Ebo is authentically Nigerian and people say, "Well I thought maybe "you just made that name up" Well we thought that about dad because he was illiterate but it still remained that eventually we discovered that there's a whole tribe of Ebos in Nigeria and we're a part of that. And the I-G-B-O within that tribe, is E-B-O and that's a family, that's right in the heart of Nigeria and so it's my faith and I find that many times I find myself, thinking and doing and acting and then I'll track it back and it's stuff that came out of Africa. So it's in my genes but it's also in my faith. - Very good. When you joined the sisterhood, the Sisters of Mary, we have some images that we can bring up that shows you and two other black nuns. So there were three of you and we've got a question `that comes to us from Educational Opportunities Center down in Westchester. Westchester you wanna go ahead and ask those questions right now, come right in and say hello. - Was there any other black nuns in the convent when you were training? - [Tim] And then you also had a second question I believe about the sisters, go ahead and ask that now too. - Did you ever feel discriminated against by the other nuns? - [Tim] Thanks very much Westchester, so two great questions. So the first one's about the other, did you have other black sisters? There were three of you, you all joined simultaneously? - [Sister Antona] Yeah it was just three of us that-- - [Tim] And how large was the order like there were the three of you, and 30 others or 150? - [Sister Antona] Close to 500 sisters at that particular time. - And the second part of their question was, did you find discrimination within the order of the sisters? Did some sisters have difficulty that you noticed accepting the three of you? - Well St.Mary's infirmary has a history of it's own and it was the first, if you go down to Avenue E you will look from Shoto and 18th street and look across the road going east, there's a large red brick hospital, which is no longer functioning now. - [Tim] And the image we see here is of the time period of when it was functioning. - Yes. - [Tim] And so, well this is the bigger sisters of Mary but that, what you're referring to, Showto was the one for - That was St. Mary's infirmary and it was our first hospital and prior to that the sisters had just gone out with a basket and bandages and bread, food and medicines and did home nursing. And then when the hospital was built and eventually became defunct, the B St.Mary's on Clayton road was built and at that time, of course, it was also a part of that segregated history of St.Louis and it was what we call, the white St. Mary's and St. Mary's infirmary. St. Mary's infirmary was closed for a short time after the hospital was built on Clayton road and then following that, when it was re-opened it was because the black doctors, graduates from the Harry, Tuscky, He, Howard University all of those places, our doctors came from those places but had no place in St.Louis where they were welcomed for staff membership and because of that the infirmary was reopened and that it where I came to be a student nurse of the United States cadet nurse program of the second world war. - And actually over the door at the time it said, - St.Mary's infirmary for the colored. - And if I was a black person that's where I went for treatment. A white person would go to the St. Mary's hospital that we know of in this area as Clayton. Could you as a nun, a nun in the order of the sister's of Mary, could you got to the hospital in Clayton the white hospital to counsel people? To service them? - Yeah I could go there. In 1952, my father came down from Bloomington in an ambulance. The sister's had made a commitment that they would see to it that my dad was cared for, because I was starting my senior year of nursing, nurses training. And at that time, there was a commitment made that the sisters would see to it, that my father would be cared for and I would not have to stay out of the order to complete my nurses training and so forth and take care of my dad and so my dad got down to St.Mary's and I had just been a patient myself, at the St Mary's on Clayton Road. And following that, when my dad came down they brought him to the hospital. The white St Mary's and unfortunately he was told that we don't take colored. He was brought down to St Mary's infirmary for the colored. He died three weeks later at St Mary's infirmary for the colored. - So there was that kind of juxtaposition and contradiction in a lot of instances about you as the sister and what the sister was doing at the time. - Well at that time, excuse me, but I made a commitment that even if I wore the white dress as my dad called it. Even though I was identified with the order and I was a member of the order, had vows in the order by that time. I had made my own commitment that no-one would ever forget that my father and my mother were both African Americans. At that time we were still colored and negro. I just was determined, and it's one of those things where the earlier question of what shaped your actions as an adult and those are the kinds of things that have shaped my actions and when God calls me home, God's gonna know that I'm still the daughter to Dan and Louise Ebo and they are both African Americans and God made us that way and when God got finished God said, "come on folks" What did God say when God got finished making us? "That's good" yes, you got the answer, "that's good" - Well that commitment to your faith certainly was part of what sent you to Selma Alabama. - Yes. - And you've referred to that a little bit. Let's give the students both here and another place as a sense of what was going on in Selma at the time. We're talking nearly 1960s. We're talking the Civil Rights movement. We're talking Martin Luther King. We're talking the Southern Christian leadership work. We're talking the desire to get people the ability to vote. Now supposedly on paper they had the ability to vote by this period of time, both men and women should have been voting by this period of time, but there's all sorts of laws in place, particularly in southern states. Poll tax laws, or literacy test laws, all sorts of ways that they were in essence preventing people from voting. You had to pay additional money to vote, or you had to pass some sort of tests 'cause you knew current events of the area or you knew something about the constitution. The goal was in essence by practice to prevent people from voting who were a bit more ignorant perhaps or less literate and a significant proportion of that population in the south was of course blacks at the time. So the civil rights people was attempting to get these people the opportunity to have their voting rights and we're gonna move forward to my tech people who make sense, clip two so we can see a little bit of what was happening in Selma, with voter demonstrations and their search for these kinds of voting rights and then we'll talk specifically about Bloody Sunday and your response to that sisters. Let's see a little bit of what's clip two on our records. - [Narrator] We engaged in marches, demonstrations, from the latter part of 1963. Young people were the first to go to jail. ♪ Story was playing one day ♪ ♪ Down in the middle that ball of hay ♪ ♪ Another little doggy came along ♪ ♪ He said let's get together and eat this ball ♪ ♪ I can be sit on the apple tree ♪ There are significant involvement of young people there are a lot of marches, a lot of demonstrations and I hope everybody is familiar with Martin Luther King's work and the whole idea of passive resistance, non-violent response. But that didn't necessarily mean, that those protesting, were responded to in a non-violent way themselves, and I wanna give you a little bit of what we're calling clip three to show you another demonstration with some police responses again before we go to the events of Bloody Sunday. - [Man] Then Dr.King came to town, he and his organization had decided after Birmingham that Selma would become their next area, and they had a sort of perfect foil in Sheriff Clarke. - And protesters were instructed not to fight back and in fact just to draw, hopefully to make it a little bit of difficulty for the police to arrest you but indeed they would arrest you and take you to jail unless you probably know Martin Luther King's spent a certain amount of time in jail himself in Birmingham, his famous letter from Birmingham was an important document. All of this was happening in Selma Alabama was a really a hot bed of activity for what was going on and a major march was planned for March 7th 1965. It was not known as Bloody Sunday in advance of that day but became known as Bloody Sunday. Now before we begin to look at this footage and then your response to it, by this point in 1965, you're a sister working in like administration in a Catholic hospital right? - Yeah. - So you moved up the ladder, you're working in administration yourself. Did you have-- - I was only an assistant. - An assistant, you weren't leading the hospital yet, don't worry, she'll take over in a little bit. But she's not leading the hospital yet, that'll come later. But you were aware of the civil rights movement and what was happening around the country right? You just weren't necessarily thinking about, how you were involved with it? - Yeah. - Okay, so there is that knowledge that's going on. So let's see some of the footage from March 7th, 1965. - [Announcer] You have to disperse. You have orders to disperse. Go home or go to your church. This march will not be safe. - [Man] The shift posse, they were pursuing us back across the bridge back to Brown Chapel Church. Beating heads, beating shoulders with the sticks and make an effort to run over, mostly with the horses. - [Woman] There was not an ambulance service for blacks. There were I think three black funeral homes and they all had their hearses, that doubled as ambulances for the black people. - I ran over to the hospital. We were carrying people into the emergency room and I remember seeing John Lewis lying there and he had three cuts in the top of... - He mentions John Lewis there at the end. John Lewis probably a politician you're familiar with now, representative from Georgia. Major force in the civil rights movement, but was indeed injured, struck on the head during those events. The next day some sisters came into your office like you mentioned earlier as we had our conversation and they asked you I guess in essence, did you hear what happened, did you see what happened yesterday? And you had not be watching TV, weren't particularly aware of those events and you said to yourself, I want you to say it again, 'cause you mentioned earlier in the program, if you weren't in, how was that saying?. - If I wasn't in this full habit, I would be down there with my people. - But the next day, fate, God, something intervened because you got a phone call. - That was on Monday when I made that statement and on Tuesday evening, I was getting ready to go over for dinner and for night prayer and my superior called, the administrator and asked me the question "how would you like to go to Selma tomorrow?" Well I knew I didn't like to go to Selma at all. And especially being me. But so I just quietly said nothing and she said "are you still there?" and I said, "yeah" I know I do a lot of fussin' and fumin' and carrying on around here, but I don't wanna be a martyr for somebody's voting rights. And what the people were actually demonstrating for was their right to register to vote. This wasn't even to go and cast a ballot. It was that they were not even allowed to go to register to vote and I usually use an expression with my own folks. When you don't go to vote, it's like spitting on the graves of the very people who have died to give us that possibility of being self-determining and that's one of those seven values in the black value system. Is that right to be self determining and when we don't go to vote, we deny ourselves and our children the right to actually be self determining and we have that responsibility to do so. - So fate, the church, God intervenes and Cardinal Ritter and we've got a picture of Cardinal Ritter that we'll bring up now. To give you a slide of Cardinal Ritter, was the archbishop of St. Louis at that time. Cardinal Ritter charters a couple of planes. - Well actually it was the ministers of the ministerial alliance and they had responded to Martin Luther. - There you are in the line, and we've got a close up of you and others in the line. So you went with five other sisters who were white. - Sister Eugene Mare the taller one and the other one is myself. - So you're flying down to Selma and now we're just a couple of days after the Bloody Sunday events and there's gonna be another march that happens and I wanna go to those events and then we're gonna go to a question here. We're gonna go to some other questions as well. So you're going to arrive and of course at this point in time the folks in Selma don't necessarily know who's coming down. Who else is gonna join their efforts and we've got a wonderful clip from the sisters of Selma DVD that you're a part of and something we would highly recommend that everybody comes familiar with. Available on Amazon.com, if anybody wants to purchase something. Those same white priests we saw a moment ago, reacting to your arrival. Let's go to that clip. - The plane opened and out stepped this sister in full regalia, I think she was a Franciscan sister and she was as black as black could be, and I said to myself, oh my God, this is gonna make a difference. - And the impact of the sisters in the march, not just you but others, did indeed make a difference and an example of that is seen in the next clip from the DVD and this is Andrew Young and others. The group is organizing in a church to talk about what's gonna happen the next day, and happen in the march. And Andrew Young, hopefully another name you're familiar with, former United Nations ambassador amongst other things and a major force in the civil rights movement, makes reference to the fact, that sister Ebo and the other sisters are there. Let's run that now. - He went to the back of the church. Andrew Young was at the podium and he was talking and he looked up and he saw her and he said, "Ladies and gentleman, "one of the great moral forces of the world "has just stepped in the door" and everybody turned around and saw this black sister standing there. - [Sister Ebo] They ushered us up into the sanctuary, by my Baptist upbringing, I knew the chair that I was sitting in was the seat of honor. It was the pastors. - It was the pastor's chair. Now give the students a little bit of an idea, of what's running through your mind. Black sister, Selma Alabama. About to march for civil rights, where you scared? Where you nervous? Was your faith supporting you? - My faith was supporting me, but that didn't say that I wasn't scared. The fear actually I think I felt it, the most when we went to get off of the plane and I knew that I had left, we had a mantel that we wore over the rest of our habit, and I left that mantel on the plane, and I thought, I'd better go back and get my mantel. I was thinking of the jails, in the terms of the old English towers where and I thought, if I end up in one of those jails, and I don't have my mantel in this march, it's gonna be cold. At that moment it struck me, well they don't have their mantel either, but if they get arrested, they'll be together. If I get arrested, I'll be alone and that's when I really got scared, because no telling what could happen. I could be another Amertil. Amertil hadn't suffered and died at that time but there had been others ahead of him, Eddy, what was his name? Jackson I think and he was the one that said, "isn't this a terrible price to pay for freedom?" And I wasn't sure that I wanted to pay that price for their freedom, because I had just voted the day before in St.Louis, so why am I gonna go down there and pay the price for their freedom? - Well let's look at some of the video and we'll continue to talk. Let's look at some of this video of you marching as we talk about these events and what was happening at the time. - For our fellow citizens in Selma, we are here secondly to protest the violation of rights. - I am a negro and I'm very proud of it. I feel it a privilege to be here today. My name as they have said, is Sister Mary Antona, I'm from St Louis, Missouri and I'm staying at St.Mary's infirmary. The sisters of St.Mary, my superiors have sponsored my coming to Selma. I feel it a privilege and I might say that yesterday being a negro, I vote and I would like to come here to say, that I feel that every citizen, every negro citizen as well as the whites have a right to vote and to be given this right. That's why I'm here today. - [Woman] We know to say, there our father. - [Man] Yes. - [Woman] Yes we know to say they are father. - [Tim] You're gonna cross what was the Edmund Pettus Bridge at that time, that was your hope. - [Sister Ebo] Yeah. - [Tim] You're marching those kinds of things and people were surprised obviously to see sisters? - Yeah I describe it as the six of us little nuns walking across the stage of history and stealing the show on the brothers, because there were 48 of them and only six of us. There's a potential bishop Ed O'Donnel is on there. He had just been ordained a few years before that and was the editor of the St. Louis review which is the weekly Catholic paper and then the other sisters that are there, and father Clements from Chicago came down and was a part of our group. He's at St.Sibona church in Chicago. - Let's give the students a chance to ask some questions 'cause we've got a couple here and I know we've got some others. I'm gonna let our interactive groups know, that in just a moment after we get one question here, I'm gonna go to St. Michael for your question about our commitment to faith and then I'm gonna go to Cole Middle school for your question about reliving the moment. And then we're gonna go to Hinkley Minnesota for your question and then we'll come back here for another question from Cardinal Ritter, 'cause students have a lot of interest in this moment in time. So come on up young lady, what's your question? - My question is how did the civil rights movement affect you and what were your feelings towards it? Like how did it make you feel? - Well I think I've been describing my feelings, of being scared, but I was also determined as the rest of my life has been, that scared is not enough. That we have to take a position and it has to be, for me, it has to be based on my faith, that the lord will make a way somehow and I will be a part of that way and therefore I gotta keep going. I have to stay involved and I'll be 89 in April and I do have lymphoma. It means just one thing that, regardless of those kinds of things, I'm still blessed because I'm in a group of sisters who allow me to do the kind of things that we're doing right now. And there was a time in which I could never have come here and sat down and talked with you, the way that we do now. But that also developed during the 60s and it was the time of what was called Vatican two, in which many of the rules and regulations of the Catholic church and the religious orders they changed, and they were modified, or became less stringent. And not only allowed, but encouraged the sisters to get of the ivory towers and be a part of the people, and that's the reason why when I was flooded out in university city back in 08, I chose I live at Homer G Philips, because it's senior residents but it's primarily my folks. And it's like going home to the hood. - Let's go to those three interactive groups. St. Michaels school, Orland Park Illinois, come right in and ask your question. - [Girl] In what ways did your commitment to your faith as a Catholic nun affect your actions in the 1960s. - Thanks St Michael, we're gonna remember that question because the three that are gonna come to us, will give you a chance to respond to them as a group so to speak. Let's go to Sarah down at Cole Middle school. Sarah what's your question? - [Sarah] If you could re-live this moment would you? - So they're asking about commitment to your faith, would you relive this experience and last but not least, on this section, I wanna go back to Hinckley Minnesota. Hinckley your question. - [Girl] How did Bloody Sunday impact your life and then what positives and negatives did you take away from it? - So she just summarized this event for the kids. How did faith make a difference for you, are you glad you did it, would you do it again? How did it really impact you? - Yeah I would do it again. I may have been a little more frisky about it but say for example the next day, we were right back on duty, like nothing had happened and I think back on it now and I keep wondering why didn't you get out in the street and do something? But that never occurred to me, because we just didn't do that. We got up that next morning and we're at our 6.00 o'clock mass and morning prayer and breakfast and back on duty, regular duty. Sister Eugene Maree was running the hospital and I was one of her assistants, but I was running the record department and the phone was ringing and almost ringing off the hook because people were calling and wanting to know, are you okay? How did it go for you? And I even received a call from Rome from the Vatican newspaper and I could hear all this clickety click that they were recording my responses to their phone calls. But it didn't occur to me that I should of been some place else maybe doing something more radical. - But the work that you did continue to do in the hospital world was indeed civil rights work because you became a woman who moved forward in a lot of ways. You became the first black women religious to lead a Catholic hospital. You were part of the group that helped, we've got some video of this we can run now, the Black Sisters Association. You were part of the group that formed an association for a black sisters convention. That clip 10. - Yeah. Actually for me, it was as the opportunities presented themselves, then it was up to me to say yes or no. Even now, when I was diagnosed with lymphoma. I was getting chemotherapy but at the same time I went to Cincinnati and talked to a group of high school seniors. Then I saw my eye doctor and he said, "I understand you were in Cincinnati" And I said, "Well how did you know?" And he said "I graduated from that high school" it was one of those things where you really don't feel your best but you try to do your best in responding to the need. If there is a need for your being there, and if there's some way in which you can encourage. Now just recently I spoke in Chicago at a high school for African American boys, that the Franciscan friars had and before I went to speak, I asked the priest who had invited me, I said, "you know most of these kids as far as you had said, "they're African American and most of them are not Catholic, "so are they gonna want an old nun "to come and talk to them?" And he said, "Sister you'd be surprised at how much "they really want somebody to come and talk with them" and when I finished my talk, and challenging them because of the number of young people that were killing other young blacks. One young man stood in the way, as we were leaving the auditorium and he said "sister I just want you to know "I heard what you said, and I promise you, "I'm gonna change my life" and I turned and I looked at this young priest that was with me, and I said, "did you hear what I heard?" and he said, "yeah and you don't hear very often either "so you'd better make the most of it" But those are the kind of times that if you can influence just one person. I can sit here and talk to you about those kinds of things and get chills because I know that, the saying from Romans 828, for those who love the Lord all things work together for good according to God's purpose and that's what we're trying to do, is to be there where the need is the greatest and to be there for the people that have the greater need. - Let's go to the question right here from this young lady. - Hi sister Ebo. I wanted to know how did it make you feel, knowing that you couldn't fight back? - That I? - [Tim] That you couldn't - That you couldn't fight back - Fight back. - That I couldn't fight back. Well to be perfectly honest, I wasn't too sorry about not fighting back. As a matter of fact, as we prepared to march when we got in the street, now in the church there was a whole group of these young people, that had been, now this was the 10th of March and the 7th of March they were the people that you saw on the documentary being beaten and shoved to the ground and stomped and they made their horses rear up so that the horses would kick the people and that went on all of the rest of Sunday and Monday. So these young people were sitting there with bandages on their heads and their faces and crutches and broken arms and casts and so forth and they're saying, well what are we gonna do, if Mayor Smithermon stops us? And these kids were saying "Oh we're gonna go on through" And I'm thinking Lord you better tell them that they don't wanna go through, 'cause I don't wanna go through. That was my prayer that we weren't gonna try to go through but so when we got into the street and seeing that picture of Pettus Bridge and all the people coming down off of the bridge, it took me another 40 years before I got to walk on that bridge. Because Mayor Smithermon had stopped us and then when we were stopped, here were all the posse and government and Mississippi or Alabama men that were in uniform, ready to stop us, and they put the sisters in the front, 'cause they wanted to show us off. Well I wasn't wanting to be showed off that much myself and there were two sisters of Loretto and if you could see a close up of the picture, they're almost hiding towards the back. So there are four of us in the front but these two sisters of Loretto also had schools that were assigned to them that they were teachers in those schools. From their order they were teaching in the schools in Alabama and the sisters of St Joseph from Grandula and the Sisters of Loretto both had telegrams they'd received by the time they got home, those telegrams had been received by their leadership, saying that if the sisters came back and did that same thing again, that they would denied the privilege of teaching in those schools. So and that letter came from the archbishop of that area, in the church. - Thanks very much for your question. And we've got a couple more questions from Cardinal Ritter. We've just got about two and a half minutes left so we don't get to these during the live program we'll be sure to ask them after we go off the air for you guys. We've only got a couple minutes left and so those interactive student groups who sent additional questions in, we'll reply to them via email, so don't worry, you'll get those responses back via email after the show and if you've got more questions that have come in you can send them to us at live@hectv.org and for those who have sent them to my phone here via the webpage, we can also send you email responses back so thanks very much for all those questions we'll get to them via email afterwards. Let's just do a couple of minutes of summary and I think this question that came from St. Micheal might help us do that. We've just got about a minute left sister. Is there someone you admire today, as a courageous social activist or is there something you would say to the kids today about the importance of activism that you'd like to leave them with as examples to follow or think about? - You know what I spoke over at the Methodist Church on Bale, I don't remember the real title of the church, not too long ago, and somebody asked, "what do you do, if you get into a situation, "like being invited to participate?" and I said, "You prepare now" "Now is the time that you stick to those books "and learn everything that you can and make a practical "application to what's going on around me today, "that I need to be a part of, "that I need to be responding to?" And being me, with my Baptist and Catholic background I would say, pray every day. Every day that you will be ready when Jesus comes and calls on you and gives you the call to be ready that you can respond in whatever way that you can. And giving of the very best that you have to give. - Thank you very much Sister Ebo. Thank you very very much. Our thanks to Sister Mary Antona Ebo for joining us today. To Cardinal College Prep for hosting. The archive of the show will be up in a week so send folks to HECtv.org to see it. Thanks everybody, we'll connect with you again very soon.