The Reredos
Servant of God
Mary Lange, O.S.P.
Mother Elizabeth Mary Lange was born in, what is now Haiti, in the 1780s. Having fled the country with other people in the 18th century, Elizabeth settled in Baltimore where a large amount of French-Speaking Catholic refugees lived. Elizabeth had inherited money from her father. Since many African-Americans lived in Baltimore without public education, Elizabeth started a school for Black people in her home at her expense.
The then Archbishop of Baltimore asked Elizabeth to found a religious order of women that would care for the education of black children. In the late 1820s, Mother Lange, two other Black women, and a priest founded the first Catholic school for Blacks in the United States. In 1829, the women made their final vows and began the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first religious order of African descent in the country. Mother Lange became its first Mother Superior and continued to educate the children despite ongoing racism and a lack of funding.