Thea Bowman

The Servant of God, Sister Thea Bowman, F.S.P.A.

Born	Bertha Bowman December 29, 1937 Yazoo City, Mississippi, United States
Died	March 30, 1990(1990-03-30) (aged 52) Canton, Mississippi, United States
Alma mater	Viterbo University Catholic University of America Boston College
Occupation	Roman Catholic Religious Sister and teacher

Sister Thea Bowman, F.S.P.A. (December 29, 1937 – March 30, 1990), was a Roman Catholic Religious Sister and Servant of God, teacher, and scholar, who made a major contribution to the ministry of the Catholic Church to her fellow African Americans. She became an evangelist among her people and was a popular speaker on faith and spirituality in her final years. She helped found the National Black Sisters Conference to provide support for African-American women in Catholic religious institutes.

She was born Bertha Bowman in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1937. Her grandfather had been born a slave, but her father was a physician and her mother a teacher. She was raised in a Methodist home but, with her parents' permission, converted to the Roman Catholic faith at the age of nine, and later joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at La Crosse, Wisconsin. There she attended Viterbo University, run by her congregation.

Bowman later attended The Catholic University of America for advanced studies, where she wrote her doctoral thesis on the American writer, William Faulkner.

Bowman taught at an elementary school in La Crosse, Wisconsin and then at a high school in Canton, Mississippi. She later taught at her alma maters, Viterbo College in La Crosse and the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., as well as at Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana.