Mother Lange and the Oblate Sisters of Providence

Born in Haiti in 1784, Elizabeth Clovis Lange immigrated to Baltimore where she taught children of French-speaking black immigrants. In 1829, she formed the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the nation’s first black Catholic order, and guided it through the challenges of discrimination, poverty, and anti-Catholic violence. Before her death in 1882, Mother Lange helped the Oblate Sisters open schools around the nation. The school she founded in West Baltimore still operates as Saint Frances Academy on Chase Street.