Sister Mary Ellen Doyle and the Selma-Montgomery Marches in 1965

Sister Mary Ellen Doyle
in Montgomery in 1965

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches that took place in Alabama to protest segregation and discrimination in regards to voting rights. The marches serve as a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement, and one person who has written extensively on the work of Ernest J. Gaines traces her involvement in fighting for the rights of those who are subjugated back to that event. In 1965, Sister Mary Ellen Doyle, SCN (Sisters of Charity of Nazareth) boarded a plane in Chicago for Montgomery where she, and others from Notre Dame, would take place in the protest. One of the things that sparked Sister Doyle's desire to take part in the march arose from a student group at Notre Dame inviting Alabama Governor George Wallace to speak at the university. Upon arriving in Montgomery, Sister Doyle recalls seeing the Confederate Flag flying above the capital as she approached it. While there, she heard Dr. Martin Luther King speak; even though she could not recall the exact words that he said, she had the strong feeling that she belonged there, at that moment and time. I believe the speech she heard is How Long, Not Long which King delivered on March 25, 1965.


Thinking about her life growing up in the Chicago suburbs, she recalled that the only African Americans she saw were workers: maids, gardeners, and live-in servants. None of them resided in her River Forest neighborhood. Pre-Brown V. Board of Education,  when she began teaching Owensboro, KY, Sister Doyle began to notice the injustices of segregation more. She encountered African American children who had difficulty reading, partly because they could not get a library card to go to the public library. For Christmas, Sister Doyle asked her parents for money so she could buy books for the children. Even after the monumental decision in 1954 to desegregate public schools, she still noticed that parents did not want their children mixing with African American students.

Almost eleven years later, Sister Doyle took part in the Civil Rights marches in Montgomery, AL. There, Doyle experienced racism first hand. As she marched in response to the subjugation and oppression that white Southerners perpetuated on the African American community, Sister Doyle recalls encountering crowds as she drove to the airport with others who made the trip to Alabama with her. She was scared for her life, especially since the KKK recently murdered Viola Liuzzo a white mother of five while she drove marchers to the airport. On her way out of Alabama, she recalls seeing headlines on papers negatively portraying the events, calling the marchers hostile and speaking of those like Sister Doyle as invaders. However, in places like Chicago, the headlines read more favorably.  

The events in Alabama shaped Sister Doyle's life, and they inspired her to use her teaching skills to enact social change. In the 1960s and 1970s, she began incorporating African American literature into her American literature courses. When she first started to write about Ernest Gaines, Sister Doyle recalls, "I think [Gaines] was a little flabbergasted at first. . . . 'Where did this white nun come from with all this interest in my writing?'" (A9) For Sister Doyle, her activism, and her involvement in the Selma to Montgomery marches shaped her life. It opened up her eyes to the racism that existed, and it also provided her with insight into the multicultural nation that America is and to what it could be. Her career worked towards fulfilling this vision of a multicultural society where everyone exists together.

I would just like to leave with a quote from Sister Doyle's Voices from the Quarters. Here, she is speaking about A Gathering of Old Men, and she links Gaines and King together in their ideas of finding ones voice and standing up against oppression. She writes,

The victory of Gaines's old men, like that of their race, occurs first in a change within their own minds, a new way of seeing themselves and their people, as well as the white race in all its historic power, benevolent and brutal. Transformed vision, as King and Gaines imply, releases the voice, enables speech and action, a 'stand' for justice. All this makes real social change possible if both races can see and hear themselves and each other as individuals and as a community. (176) 

For Sister Doyle, the history that I read about in books like The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman or in history books did not occur in the distant past. In fact, some of the events occurred during her lifetime, and Gaines's, and she recalls them as catalysts for her life's path. That is why speaking and listening to people like her and Ernest Gaines is important. They are individuals who not only researched history and literature, they lived it, just as we are living it now.

The article in the Kentucky Standard about Sister Doyle can be found on their website. The photos her are credited to Kacie Goode on the Kentucky Standard's site.

Doyle, Mary Ellen. Voices from the Quarters: The Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. Print.
Goode, Kacie. "Putting principles to practice: SCN shares about Civil Rights Movement, involvement in Selma-Montgomery march." Kentucky Standard [Bardstown] 15 Feb. 2015: A1, A9. Print.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman Film

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the film version of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. In January 1974,CBS premiered the film version of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. That year millions watched the movie and it won nine Emmy awards including a best actress award for Cicely Tyson's portrayal of Miss Jane. Without the film's success on prime time national television, it could be argued that Alex Haley's Roots would not appear three years later in 1977. If The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman failed, it would've shown that the country was not prepared for a prime time film that centers around African American characters. Instead, the overall success of the film proved that the nation was ready, in some form, to see a story about African American characters specifically, thus paving the way for the Roots mini-series.  

Like any film adaptation, though, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman differs from the book. Most notably, instead of an African American teacher approaching Miss Jane about her story, the film version has a white reporter from New York coming to Louisiana to get Miss Jane's story for a magazine. It must be noted that the novel does not specify the teacher's race; however, through context, I assume the editor to be an African American teacher. This difference is important. In the book, the school teacher, who has been trying to get Miss Jane to tell her story for a while, goes to the plantation where she lives in 1962. Upon arrival, Mary Hodges confronts the teacher and asks why he is there to interview Miss Jane. He simply tells her that he teaches history and "her life's story can help [him] explain things to [his] students" (v). Mary then asks what's wrong with the books at the school, and the teacher responds, "Miss Jane is not in them" (v). The teacher wants to provide a voice to those who have no voice, or presence, in the history books or elsewhere. He wants his students, presumably African American students, to see and understand themselves better.

In the film, the white reporter comes to speak with Miss Jane, and just like the book, Mary asks the reporter why he wants to talk with her. He only says, "I'm writing a feature story."When pressed, he only responds by saying Miss Jane used to be a slave and he wants to hear (get) her story. Apart from these things, the reporter does not give much information. Compared to the novel's "editor," the reporter appears to be more interested in prestigious gain rather than in telling Miss Jane's and the community's story to  others. The scene ends with Miss Jane walking inside and Mary informing the reporter that Miss Jane is tired and she will make a decision the next day regarding whether or not to speak with him.After Jimmy and others get arrested, she decides to speak. Framed this way, the movie still contains the community aspects of the novel;  however, unlike the novel, they are firmly centered around the Civil Rights movement because the film opens not with the reporter speaking with Miss Jane but with Jimmy asking her to stand up as a symbol for the movement.

Over the next few posts, I will discuss the film version of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. I will show items from the collection such as reviews and correspondence. I will also take the time to talk about Gaines' comments regarding the film and other items. The video below is Ned's speech at the river. As always, if you have a comment, or questions, feel free to leave it down below.    

Gaines, Ernest J. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. New York: Bantam Books, 1972. Print.