In 1951, Jo Murray stood at the helm of a ship bound for America. Jo was 18 years old. Like many teenagers her age, she was moving west in search of a better life. However, unlike most of her peers, her dreams were not of prosperity and upward mobility. Jo dreamed of a convent in San Antonio. She was going to become a nun. With her sister, Gabrielle and two other Irish girls by her side, Jo would be part of the founding of the first free Catholic school for African Americans in the State of Texas.
The grand-niece of Jo and Gabrielle Murray, Emma Decker, became fascinated with her family’s history, with the nuns’ involvement in the civil rights movement and with the challenges they now face as they enter old age and witness their way of life coming to an end. This order of nuns defied the Catholic Church’s orders to stay out of politics. Instead, they marched in civil rights marches, campaigned for the de-segregation of schools and mourned the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Sisters paints a picture of a very different time. It tells the remarkable stories of women long faded from memory, in the hope that these trail-blazing sisters from Ballinasloe will live on in a world changed for the better.
Listen now on Documentary on One : Sisters.
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Photos courtesy of the Murray and Decker families.