Katie Geneva Cannon was the first Black woman ordained a minister of word and sacrament in the Presbyterian Church. She was born in 1950 in the Fisher Town neighborhood of Kannapolis, N.C., one of the seven children of Corine and Esau Cannon. She graduated from Barber-Scotia College (Concord, N.C.), completed a Doctor of Divinity at Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary, and was the first African American to complete a Doctor of Philosophy at Union Theological Seminary (New York, N.Y.). She was ordained by the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Presbytery of Catawba in 1974. A founding voice in Womanist theology, Cannon taught at Temple University, and Union Presbyterian Seminary (Richmond, Va.). In 2018 she founded the Center for Womanist Ethics at Union in Richmond; she died August 8, 2018. This collection represents in a single online location personal records of Katie's that she intended to distribute among Presbyterian Historical Society, Union Presbyterian Seminary, and Union Theological Seminary in New York.
Featured image: Katie G. Cannon preaching, circa 1993.