Despite being a black woman in a slave state before the Emancipation Proclamation, Elizabeth Clarissa Lange, a Caribbean native, used her own money and home to educate children of color. In 1829, Lange professed her vows and took the religious name of Mary. At a time when African American Catholics could not aspire to religious life, Mary Elizabeth Lange became the first superior general of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first Black Roman Catholic order. She and her sisters would educate and evangelize African Americans. Their ministry also provided a home for orphans and the elderly and nursed the terminally ill.