Pickin’ Cotton on the Way to Church highlights the life of Father Boniface Hardin, a Benedictine monk. James Dwight Randolph (Randy) Hardin was born on November 18, 1933, in Bardstown, Kentucky, educated in Catholic schools in Kentucky, and thirteen years old when he asked to become a priest. Excluded from the seminaries in Kentucky because of his race, he enrolled in Saint Meinrad Seminary in Spencer County, Indiana, which had just started accepting black students. After six years of study he took his vows as monk and was given the name Boniface. He was ordained a priest in 1959 and attained a graduate degree in 1963. In 1965 Father Hardin accepted the position of associate pastor at Holy Angels Catholic Church, a predominately black parish in Indianapolis. Father Hardin was a social activist who spoke out against poverty, segregation, police brutality, and fought against the construction of an interstate highway that would adversely affect the black community. Such actions were considered inappropriate for a priest and the Archbishop of Indianapolis removed him from his position at Holy Angels. Although reinstated due to public outcries, Father Hardin soon left Holy Angels, and, along with Sister Jane Shilling, opened the Martin Center, where they could advocate full time for the poor and disenfranchised through a series of programs and services. Realizing the correlation between education and career advancement, Father Boniface and Sister Jane founded Martin University, the only predominately African American institution of higher learning in Indiana. The university continues to play a unique role in the community, with a special focus on educational opportunities to those who have been too often discounted, discouraged, and disregarded by society. Although Father Hardin was widely known in Indiana during his lifetime, accumulating many awards and honors, it is important to document his life and work for posterity. It is hoped that this volume will provide an overview of his story and lay the foundation for other scholarly efforts.

This first-ever Black Catholic Studies Reader offers an introduction to the theology and history of the Black Catholic experience from those who know it best: Black Catholic scholars, teachers, activists, and ministers. The reader offers a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary approach that illuminates what it means to be Black and Catholic in the United States. This collection of essays from prominent scholars, both past and present, brings together contributions from theologians M. Shawn Copeland, Kim Harris, Diana Hayes, Bryan Massingale, and C. Vanessa White, and historians Cecilia Moore, Diane Batts Morrow, and Ronald Sharps, and selections from an earlier generation of thinkers and activists, including Thea Bowman, Cyprian Davis, and Clarence Rivers. Contributions delve into the interlocking fields of history, spirituality, liturgy, and biography. Through their contributions, Black Catholic Studies scholars engage theologies of liberation and the reality of racism, the Black struggle for recognition within the Church, and the distinctiveness of African-inspired spirituality, prayer, and worship. By considering their racial and religious identities, these select Black Catholic theologians and historians add their voices to the contemporary conversation surrounding culture, race, and religion in America, inviting engagement from students and teachers of the American experience, social commentators and advocates, and theologians and persons of faith.

For shy little hillbilly Altha Murphy, it was a long journey from the Ozark foothills to serving in twenty-one churches during a forty-six-year period. In this memoir, The Pastor's Helpmate, Murphy shares her personal stories and anecdotes of what it was like to be the wife of a pastor who served in churches in the backwoods, small towns, and the inner city. Filled with poignant insights, Murphy illustrates how God has worked in her life. She expresses the doubts, fears, and perplexities she and her husband, Truett, experienced throughout their life with the church. The Pastor's Helpmate illustrates how she found comfort in the Bible and through relationships with parishioners, neighbors, family members, and students. She describes how her life was enriched by all of the people she met throughout the years. With honesty and humor, Murphy provides a peek into the day-to-day life of a pastor and his family. From good to bad, and sad to funny, The Pastor's Helpmate relates the joy gained from the lifetime bonds that were formed and the lessons learned during her long journey.

When Copply Robinson leaves the oppressive Jim Crow South in the 1940s, she finds herself working in the hot fields of Safford, Arizona, picking cotton with other migrants and with her frustrated, philandering husband. Although she forms close friendships with some of the pickers, her life feels thwarted and bleak. But, Copply knows things are not as hopeless as they seem because she has a plan. One morning, while her husband is sleeping off a drunken binge, she packs up her two small children, grabs a wad of twenty dollar bills she has saved, and drives their car west to Tucson. Life there gets better for her; then it gets worse—forcing her to flee once again. Picking in High Cotton is the true story of author Shirley Robinson Sprinkles's mother, whose courageous fight to thrive motivates her to never accept poverty and destructive social norms. She is determined to change her destiny and that of her family at every opportunity. Hers is both a timely and a timeless story. Part one of this book has been adapted to a screenplay titled, High Cotton.

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Ann Wilson offers her readers her searing personal story of domestic violence. Ann was born and raised on a farm in Mississippi and served as a Major in the Army Nurse Corps as a registered nurse. But her military career was interrupted when she was shot by her husband three times with a .45 Magnum, after only six weeks of marriage. Her five-year-old and three-year-old children witnessed the horrendous act of violence that near-fatal evening. The author has made the brave decision to share the details of this horrific event in order to shed light on the devastation of domestic violence, revealing its effect on her, her children, her friends, her family, and other innocent people. It took Ann years of counseling, hospitalizations, and surgeries to heal after the shooting, which ripped half of the right side of her face off. She lost an eye and will always be in pain because of a nerve injury in her arm, not to mention the resection of fractured ribs from the bullets. She has bullet fragments all over her body. This book asserts that domestic violence is not limited in its scope. It crosses all socioeconomic classes, ethnicities, sex, age, religion, and educational backgrounds. Ann Wilson is telling her story to help people realize that it is not over if they are involved in relationships with domestic violence. You can survive. You need to get help and get out of it. You are not alone.

The New York Times best selling true story of an unlikely friendship forged between a woman and the man she incorrectly identified as her rapist and sent to prison for 11 years. Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape, and eventually positively identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken-- but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars. After eleven years, Ronald was allowed to take a DNA test that proved his innocence. He was released, after serving more than a decade in prison for a crime he never committed. Two years later, Jennifer and Ronald met face to face-- and forged an unlikely friendship that changed both of their lives. With Picking Cotton, Jennifer and Ronald tell in their own words the harrowing details of their tragedy, and challenge our ideas of memory and judgment while demonstrating the profound nature of human grace and the healing power of forgiveness.