Anne Marie Becraft
{{Short description|American educator and nun}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Anne Marie Becraft
| honorific_suffix = OSP
| other_names = Sister Aloysius
| image =
| caption =
| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{birth year|1805}}
| birth_place =
| death_date = {{Death year and age|1833|1805|12}}
| death_place = Baltimore
| burial_place = Baltimore's Old Cathedral Cemetery
| occupation = Teacher
| education =
}}
Anne Marie Becraft, OSP (1805 – December 16, 1833) was an American educator and nun.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fxsmAgAAQBAJ|title=Encyclopedia of African American Religions|last1=Murphy|first1=Larry G.|last2=Melton|first2=J. Gordon|last3=Ward|first3=Gary L.|date=2013-11-20|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781135513382|language=en}} Around 1820, she established a school for black girls in Washington, D.C., and later joined the Oblate Sisters of Providence.{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/personsofcolorre00morr|url-access=registration|title=Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1828-1860|last=Morrow|first=Diane Batts|date=2002|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press|isbn=9780807854013|language=en}}
Biography
= Early life and education =
Becraft (sources also refer to her as Maria or Marie Becraft){{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/historyofnegrora00willrich|title=History of the negro race in America from 1619 to 1880. Negroes as slaves, as soldiers, and as citizens; together with a preliminary consideration of the unity of the human family, an historical sketch of Africa, and an account of the negro governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia|last=Williams|first=George Washington|date=1885|publisher=New York, G. P. Putnam's sons|others=University of California Libraries}} was born in 1805 to William and Sara Becraft, prominent free Black Catholics.
Anne Marie's grandmother, also a free Black, worked as a housekeeper for Charles Carroll (the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence) and was likely his concubine; Carroll presented Annie Marie's father with several of the Carroll family's prized relics, paintings, and other keepsakes just before Carroll's death in 1832.{{Cite web|last=Williams|first=Shannen Dee|date=2016-09-18|title=Congratulations Georgetown. Now It's Time to Own Up to the Racist History of the Catholic Church.|url=https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/163851|access-date=2020-10-14|website=History News Network}}
The oldest of seven children, Anne Marie began her formal education at the age of four at the White-operated Potter School in Washington, D.C. Race hostilities forced her to leave the school in 1812. Becraft continued her studies at another White-operated school, New Georgetown, until 1820, when it closed because White involvement in the education of black people was discouraged.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0XMXmwEACAAJ|title=Black Women in America: The Early Years, 1617-1899|last=Hine|first=Darlene Clark|editor-last1=Hine|editor-first1=Darlene Clark|editor-last2=Thompson|editor-first2=Kathleen|date=1997-07-31|publisher=Facts on File|isbn=9780816034253|language=en}}
At 15, Becraft became the proprietor of a day school for girls. The school operated from a house on Dunbarton Street in Georgetown. There was an average of 35 girls who "comprised girls from the best colored families of Georgetown, Washington, Alexandria, and surrounding counties."{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2eztAAAAMAAJ|title=Contributions of Black Women to America: Civil rights, politics and government, education, medicine, sciences|last=Davis|first=Marianna W.|date=1982|publisher=Kenday Press|language=en}} The school became known as the Georgetown Seminary and operated as an academy for boarders and day students, one of the first for females in the District. Becraft operated the school for eight years, at which point she resigned and moved to Baltimore in 1831 to join the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore, the first Catholic religious order for women of African descent. The school continued under the direction of Ellen Simonds.
= Religious life =
On September 8, 1832, Becraft received the religious name Aloysius (some sources say Aloyons). The following year she took her vows and became the 11th sister to join the Oblates.{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/emergenceofblack0000macg|url-access=registration|title=The Emergence of a Black Catholic Community: St. Augustine's in Washington|last=MacGregor|first=Morris J.|date=1999|publisher=CUA Press|isbn=9780813209432|language=en}} She was a teaching oblate who instructed her students in arithmetic, English and embroidery.
= Death =
Legacy
On April 18, 2017, Georgetown University renamed Remembrance Hall after Becraft. The building was originally named for Fr. William McSherry, who played a role in the 1838 Jesuit slave sale.{{Cite web|url=https://www.georgetown.edu/news/liturgy-remembrance-contrition-hope-slavery|title=Georgetown Apologizes for 1838 Sale of 272 Slaves, Dedicates Buildings|website=www.georgetown.edu|date=18 April 2017 |language=en|access-date=2018-02-02}} The dedication of Anne Marie Becraft Hall was attended by Georgetown president John DeGioia, current students and administrators, and descendants of Becraft.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/georgetown-apologizes-renames-halls-after-slaves-n747976|title=Georgetown apologizes, renames halls after slaves|work=NBC News|access-date=2018-02-02|language=en-US}} Anne Marie Becraft Hall is the first building at Georgetown University to be named after an African-American woman.{{Cite news|url=http://www.thehoya.com/viewpoint-celebrating-anne-marie-becraft/|title=VIEWPOINT: Celebrating Anne Marie Becraft|date=2017-04-18|work=The Hoya|access-date=2018-02-02|language=en-US}}
Marcia Chatelain, associate professor of history and African American studies and a member of the Georgetown University Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation, described Becraft as "a devout Catholic and deeply committed to educating young girls of color in the nation's capital. Though she experienced both anti-Catholic and anti-black intimidation, she nevertheless responded to her calling to teach and to serve God."{{Cite web|url=https://www.georgetown.edu/news/anne-marie-becraft-hall|title=Building to Be Renamed for Pioneer Black Educator Anne Marie Becraft|website=www.georgetown.edu|date=13 April 2017 |language=en|access-date=2018-02-04}}
The 1870 "Condition and Improvement of Public Schools in the District of Columbia" stated that Becraft "is remembered, wherever she was known, as a woman of the rarest sweetness and exaltation of Christian life, graceful and attractive in person and manners, gifted, well educated, and wholly devoted to doing good."{{Cite book|title=Special report of the commissioner of education on the condition and improvement of public schools in the District of Columbia :submitted to the Senate June, 1868, and to the House, with additions, June 13, 1870|date=1871|publisher=Washington, D.C. |hdl = 2027/hvd.32044028319382}}