In 1937, 19-year-old Emily Neely settled an idea that had been in her head for years. It was a decision that would give her life a whole new meaning and path. Her identity would change. She would no longer be Emily, she would now be Sister Lurana.
Going forward, people would know her as none other. Neely would be part of the Sisters of Blessed Sacrament family and help teach at SBS’s many schools. It would be at their premier institution, Xavier University of Louisiana, that Neely would make her greatest impact.
Her talents drove her teaching, inspiring her students to new horizons. Sister Lurana would mentor many over the decades. Frank Hayden and John Scott being two of the most well known.
Students would go on to become revered artists and teachers. They learned from her the value of shared knowledge and the power of working as a collective. Her perspectives on making art and why you make it became a way of life for her students.
Neely would move several times once she was part of the Sisters of Blessed Sacrament. This was not new, she had been moving all of her life. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, her family relocated to Long Island, New York. Then, in her high school years, they moved again, landing in Yeadon, Pennsylvania, an old Swedish settlement to the west of Philadelphia. Her parents enrolled her in West Philadelphia Catholic Girls High School.
It was there that she learned about the Sisters of Blessed Sacrament in an article from a publication that SBS put out called Mission Fields at Home. The Sisters of Blessed Sacrament weren’t far away, located in an area north east of Philadelphia known as Cornwells Heights. Reading about Mother Katharine and the mission of the Sisters touched Neely deeply. The beauty she found in their story would resonate with Neely and for the next five years be on her mind.
Upon graduation, Neely’s reflection of a life of religious vocation grew. There were over 135,000 sisters and nuns at the time who were dedicating their lives to helping others, so it was not unusual for Neely to look at this option. These sisters were public servants and became the backbones of countless schools, hospitals, and other social services in the U.S. Committing life to the church went beyond just a spiritual calling. Being a woman in the late 1930s, options and opportunities were limited. Further education was not always a given, especially if you did not have the means to do so. The direction of sisterhood appealed to women looking to do more in life. For Neely, there were a number of orders in her area to choose from. Her school alone was run by 6 different orders, but it was the Sisters of Blessed Sacrament that stood out above the rest.
'From an early age I understood God's gift to me was a particular talent in art. Soon I became aware also of another gift, a call to give myself totally to that source of beauty, and still another – a special love for Jesus Eucharistic. Later, the realization of the great injustices to which the African-American and Native American peoples have been subject to in our country stimulated a strong desire to work towards changing those injustices…All these gifts and desires came together when I became a Sister of Blessed Sacrament. As such, it has been my joy and privilege to use whatever talents and energy is given to me to serve God and those who have been oppressed and denied social justice and particularly in my teaching to assist my students in discovering and developing in themselves similar gifts.” Sister Lurana Neely
After Sister Lurana was professed and said her initial vows in 1939, she got her first exposure to teaching at the boarding school and orphanage, Holy Providence, which SBS ran out of their Motherhouse property. With that experience, she was relocated to New Orleans to teach music at the SBS’s Xavier Preparatory School in 1940.
Located on Magazine Street between Soniat and Dufossat Streets, this was the original campus that the SBS settled in when they were called to New Orleans to create a school in 1915. It was here that Xavier University started before it was relocated in 1932 to its current campus.
Being in New Orleans allowed Sister Lurana to take classes at Loyola University and work towards a B.A. degree. Loyola had been founded by the Jesuit Order in 1904, and was the premier Catholic institution in the city. It was only a couple of miles away from Xavier Prep, so easy for Sister Lurana to get there.
During this time, in 1944, Sister Lurana went back to the Motherhouse in Philadelphia to profess her final vows. Also known as perpetual vows, this is like a marriage ceremony, where she is a bride to Christ. In this, Sister Lurana fully committed her life to the mission of the Sisters of Blessed Sacrament and to the Church.
The following year, Sister Lurana was relocated to St. Francis de Sales in a rural, pastoral area west of Richmond, Virginia. Overlooking the James River, this was one of SBS’s early schools to serve the underserved. “The school provided an academic opportunity in a nurturing setting far from the racial realities of the outside world.” Begun in 1895, a lot of the structure and culture that SBS would use in future schools got its start in the halls of this institution. Here, discipline and hard work was essential. Alumni Cheryl Burke reflected on her time there, stating “the routine was quite different. I had to learn how to study. I was required to read the classics … (even) the way you had to sit in the classrooms. The expectations were so high. The nuns didn’t play. They didn’t play at all.” Sister Lurana would teach there throughout the rest of the 1940s, with a few sabbaticals to complete her studies at Loyola, and get a Masters of Fine Arts at Catholic University in Washington D.C. in 1949.
With a masters degree in art and the experience from St. Francis de Sales, the SBS assigned her to a new role in the fall of 1950. She would be returning to New Orleans and joining the faculty of the art department at Xavier University.
In coming back to New Orleans after 5 years, Sister Lurana was returning to a city long entrenched in injustice. By the 1950s, the Sisters were no longer alone in their social justice fight. Change was coming, as a new generation of people of color were no longer willing to put up with daily humiliation and harassment. They were coming together and speaking up, letting it be known that they were here to bring an end to the laws and customs that prohibited them from the opportunities afforded to everyone else.
Of course, the push back to this call for justice and progress would spark an ugly side of the U.S. and its people. Violence and tragedy would soon become the norm. Living with this became a new test to society.
Teaching in the midst of this turmoil would be the challenge presented to Sister Lurana and the rest of Xavier University faculty in the 1950s and 1960s. As always with the Sisters of Blessed Sacrament, there was a plan. By 1950, SBS had dealt with this problem for over half a century. Their founder, Mother Katharine Drexel, now in her 90s, had a lifetime of experience in dreaming up new solutions and having the SBS carry them out. With them, Sister Lurana had a strong council to help her out with this challenge. Having this support would allow Sister Lurana to look, as she did with her art, at the still unfinished surfaces of society and find a way to bring out its beauty.
-Bennet Rhodes
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Readings:
katharinedrexel.org/timeline/expansion/
Catholic_sisters_and_nuns_in_the_United_States
asec-sldi.org/news/general/what-do-nuns-do/
nursingclio.org "Protestant Community".
storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/18fc43c2f7404fe38c1c4bd6061a4f7e
richmond.com/preserving-the-history-of-a-life-changing-place-before-it-crumbles
www.swissinfo.ch/eng/history/monastic-life-_nuns-powerful-women-of-the-middle-ages.
https://chrc-phila.org/hometown_saint/
https://www.socialworkers.org/News/Facts/Social-Work-History
online.regiscollege.edu/blog/history-of-social-work/
https://yeadonborough.com/about/history/