Notes on Doctor Dame Ruth Nida Barrow and Doctor Yvonne Delk

Doctor Dame Ruth Nida Barrow

Doctor Dame Ruth Nida Barrow was born in Barbados in 1916, during a period of colonial rule and a growing call for independence from Britain. Despite the abolition of slavery, the country's economy was still heavily reliant on sugar and controlled by British interests.

Barrow's family actively resisted this imperialism. Her brother, Errol Barrow, played a key role in founding the opposition party that spearheaded the independence movement. Her family also had a history of faith leadership, labor rights activism, and skilled trades.

Her father, an Anglican priest, passed away when she was young, and her mother worked in the USA to support the family. An uncle served as her primary caregiver in Barbados, where she attended school. Barrow completed her nursing education at Barbados General Hospital in 1935 and her secondary education at Saint Michael's School in 1934. She trained as a nurse, midwife, and healthcare administrator.

Dame Barrow continued her studies at the University of Toronto's School of Nursing in Canada. During her travels through the US in the 1940s, she encountered the racism faced by people of African descent. Despite spending much of her life in a majority-African context under colonial rule, a layover in Miami, Florida, exposed her to accommodation challenges due to racial prejudice.

Despite this, Doctor Barrow continued her nursing career in Barbados, Trinidad, and Jamaica in the 1940s and 50s, focusing on midwifery. She then became a nursing advisor for the Pan American Health Organization, advising 13 Commonwealth Caribbean governments on nursing, nursing education, and community health programs.

She received a Rockefeller fellowship and continued her training at the Royal College of Nursing of Edinburgh University (1951-1952) and Columbia University (1962-1963). She instructed at the West Indies School of Public Health in Jamaica (1945-1950) and held nursing and public health positions in Barbados and the Caribbean, including West Indian matron of the University College Hospital (1954) and principal nursing officer of Jamaica (1956).

From 1964, she directed a research project in nursing in the Commonwealth Caribbean, leading to reorganized and upgraded nurse training and the introduction of advanced nursing studies at the University of the West Indies. These experiences shaped her future ecumenical, global, and political leadership. In 1975, she became director of the Christian Medical Commission of the WCC and president of the World YWCA (1975-1983).

She was named Dame of Saint Andrew of the Order of Barbados in 1980, the highest honor in Barbados, during a period when Barbados' parliamentary democracy was modeled on the Westminster system (1966-2021). She also received an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Nursing. She participated in the 1985 Nairobi Conference, marking the end of the UN Decade for Women, and became her country's ambassador to the UN.

Described as powerful yet warm-hearted, she was seen as a representative of self-confident Christian women. She served as WCC president from 1983 to 1991, overlapping with her role as the female governor-general of Barbados (1990-1995). Her pioneering leadership was globally significant, building on her family's legacy of leadership.

Doctor Yvonne Delk

Reverend Doctor Yvonne Delk served in the Darfur region of Sudan through Operation Crossroads Africa. Operation Crossroads Africa was founded by Reverend James Robinson. She met with Doctor Delk for fund raising.

Delk was born in the Deep South of the United States, growing up during the era of Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws were a racial caste system that enforced racial segregation and discrimination primarily in the southern and border states of the USA from 1877 to the mid-1960s. Jim Crow laws legitimized anti-black racism. Her family lived in the city's red-light district due to redlining policies.

Her father, Marcus Thomas Delk senior, worked on maintenance at Norfolk State College and other jobs. Her mother, Cora Elizabeth Chambersdale, emphasized the importance of remembering one's identity. Her grandmother, a minister and missionary in the United Holy Church of America, also influenced her. The United Holy Church of America was established in 1886. The family rejoiced in the birth of their miracle daughter, which fostered her spiritual lens.

Delk's spiritual formation started at home and at Macedonia Christian UCC in Norfolk, Virginia. She had an important experience at a summer camp at Franklinton Center and Bricks Junior College in Whittakerhurst, North Carolina, sponsored by the Convention of the South (now the Southeast Conference Of The UCC). This conference has a history of missionary efforts dating back to the Reconstruction period (1866-1877). The Franklinton Center was located on the grounds of a former college for formerly enslaved people and is now a social justice retreat and conference center. There, Delk deepened her understanding of the history, suffering, and spirituality of African peoples.

She graduated with a BA in sociology from Norfolk State College in 1961, where she joined the NAACP youth council and participated in sit-ins to desegregate businesses in Norfolk, Virginia in 1960. After graduating, she chose to study for a master's degree in religious education at Andover Newton Theological Seminary in Newton, Massachusetts, instead of social work at Atlanta University, despite receiving a full scholarship to study social work at Atlanta University. She completed her thesis on the inner city in 1963. She joined the Eastern Shores Campaign of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the Cambridge Civil Rights Movement. In 1977, she completed a doctor of ministry degree at the New York Theological Seminary.

After graduating from seminary in 1963, she served as a Christian educator at the historic black congregation with the UCC First Congregational Church in Atlanta, Georgia, and later as a parish minister at a predominantly white church, the reformed church of the UCC in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1969, Delk joined the national staff of the United Church Board of Homeland Ministries, becoming the first woman of African descent to hold a national program staff role in that organization. She became part of the black ecumenical movements within and outside of the UCC.

Delk supported the Black Manifesto in 1969, demanding reparations for black enslavement. The black manifesto demanded 500,000,000 for represent for reparations. In 1970, she visited countries in West and East Africa. She worked with justice Anne Gjigay and the Program to Combat Racism (PCR), and later chaired the WCC's convocation on justice, peace, the integrity of creation. She served from 1985 to 1996 as the UCC-appointed representative to the PCR of the WCC.

In 1998, she wrote the call to ecumenical celebration of hope at the WCC International Consultation on Racism and Racial Justice. She also served on the board of the Black Theology Project and presented findings on children and poverty to the US House of Representatives in 1988.

She was ordained in the UCC National Church denomination on November 17, 1974. In 1981, she became the leader of the UCC's Office of Church and Society. In 1989, Delk was nominated to lead the UCC as general minister and president but lost the election. Doctor Delft moved to Chicago to lead the Community Renewal Society. She founded the Center for African American Theological Education. She cofounded the African American Women of Ministry Network and Conference (AAWMUCC) with reverend doctor Bernice Powell Jackson.

Doctor. Doe's season of leadership is also a gateway to the generation of Pan African women of faith beyond 1983. She is one of only three women in this book who are still with us and the youngest. All the women in this book were ecumenical and church pioneers ahead of their time.