Agnes Hopewell was the fifth of eight children of Benedict O. Hopewell, a farmer, and Lilla V. Hopewell (Smith), a housekeeper and cook for Cardinal Gibbons high school. When she was in second grade, Father McKenna SJ (St. Peter Claver, 1931-1953) invited a Black Jamaican priest to the parish. It is during his visit that Agnes decided to become a nun.

When Agnes graduated from St. Peter Claver school, she was awarded a scholarship to attend St. Frances Academy in Baltimore, the first and oldest continually operating Black Catholic school in the United States. A few months after her seventeenth birthday, she joined the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the African-American sisterhood founded in 1829 by the Haitian-Cuban refugee Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, and adopted the name Sister Marilyn.

During a 60-year career, Sister Marilyn taught at many different schools, including Christ the King Catholic School in Orangeburg, SC, Pius V in Baltimore, Holy Comforter - St. Cyprian Catholic School in Washington DC, Cardinal Gibbons high school (1966-1967), and St. Joseph high school in Westchester, IL. Most of these schools served Black students but St. Joseph was a racially diverse, college prep school.

In 1990, Sister Marilyn helped to break ground in Black educational leadership when she became the principal of Holy Child school in Philadelphia. After the school closed in 1993, she
became principal at St. Margaret of Scotland in Seat Pleasant, MD. Sister Marilyn concluded her career by establishing her own school, Hopewell Academy.

As an educator, Sister Marilyn wore many hats. At Christ the King, she coached members of the marching band. At Pius V, she promoted physical fitness. She had a chin-up bar in her sixth-grade classroom and taught the first gym class at the school. At Holy Comforter, she taught her students the Black National Anthem. At St. Joseph, she shared her love for the art of Karate with students and drove a daily school bus route. She attended athletic events, including basketball games starring basketball great Isaiah Thomas. She even earned a brief appearance in the documentary Hoop Dreams (1994), commenting on the academic progress of NBA hopeful William Gates whose favorite teacher was Sister Marilyn.

Sister Marilyn took pride in her mental prowess, her achievements and impact, and even her robust health. Rather than being subservient to her Mother Superior and the mandates of the Church, she walked to her own drum. When she was invited to Chicago, for example, to help minister to the growing number of African-Americans who had settled in the city, her mother superior demurred but Sister Marilyn secured the backing of Father McKenna who told her that she was forty years ahead of the Oblates, an assessment she promptly related to Mother Superior.

Sister Marilyn’s spunk served her well during the turbulent years of the Civil Rights Movement, especially after Vatican II (1962-1965) when calls to religious life nosedived. Desegregation, which threatened the survival of the Black Catholic educational system, threw the Oblates for a loop. Not surprisingly, some sisters felt unmoored and lost their sense of purpose. But others, including Sister Marilyn, became fighters.

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​            “I know what the black movement was about and I … I would follow the black movement. Every time there was a march, I marched…”          - Sister Marilyn Hopewell

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In 1970, Sister Marilyn was removed from the historically Black Holy Comforter Catholic School in Washington DC after several run-ins with a white teacher. After her removal and the forced transfer of all five Oblates assigned to St. Paul and St. Augustine for the 1969-1970 academic year, Black lay Catholics in DC protested what they called “the politics of genocide being performed on […] the Oblate Sisters [...]” Black parents cited “the persistent, sinister pressure … constantly exerted, on the Black women of the Oblate Order, to “whip them in line…” (Subversive Habits, p. 211) But it was not in Sister Marilyn’s nature to stay in her lane. While in Washington DC, she worked with the library association to make the library more accessible to intercity children and lobbied for naming the new public library after Martin Luther King Jr.

Sister Marilyn was part of the American delegation when Pope Paul VI visited Uganda in 1969, marking the first-ever visit by a reigning pontiff to Africa. It is during his visit to Uganda that Pope Paul VI told the people of Africa: “You must now give your gifts of Blackness to the White church.” Sharing the gifts of Blackness was what Sister Marilyn did during her twenty-one years in Chicago. She organized the first Catholic revival, teaching both Black and White priests how to integrate aspects of black spirituality in their liturgies.

Although Sister Marilyn responded fiercely and courageously to the demands of her time, never hesitating to take a stance for racial and social justice, she remained rooted in her past and loyal to the aspects of tradition she cherished.

Ridge remained home for Sister Marilyn. When St. Peter Claver closed its schools, Sister Marilyn helped a dispirited home community come to terms with its losses by organizing transportation to Sunday masses. In 1972, Sister Marilyn was deeply shaken by the demolition of Gibbons Hall, the building that had housed Cardinal Gibbons high school.

Eventually, rather than retiring to the Mother House of the Oblate sisters in Baltimore, Sister Marilyn returned to St. Mary’s County where she remained a vibrant presence at St. Peter Claver church. During Sunday masses, wearing her trademark high heels, she strutted to the altar, still straight as a rod, and facing the congregation, led parishioners in singing with the choir.

Sister Marilyn was cherished by the Hopewell, Smith and Campbell families. When it became too difficult for Sister Marilyn to live by herself, she moved in with her niece Gwendolyn Jackson, a daughter of her younger sister Sadie. She died on October 3th, 2021, at a care facility in La Plata.

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Sister Marilyn Agnes Hopewell was interviewed on May 6, 2013 in her Lexington Park home by Alma Jordon and Merideth Taylor for the Unified Committee for Afro-American Contributions Oral History Project. A verbatim transcript is available.