Katie Geneva Cannon

Early life Born on January 3, 1950, Cannon spent her childhood in Kannapolis, North Carolina, a racially segregated community where she could not use local facilities such as the YMCA, swimming pool or library.

Education and career Cannon graduated from George Washington Carver High School in 1967 as her class's salutatorian. Cannon graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in education from Barber–Scotia College, followed by a Master of Divinity from Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and both a Master's and Doctor of Philosophy degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York. She was also the Lilly Distinguished Visiting Professor of Religion at Davidson College and the Sterling Brown Visiting Professor in Religion and African American Studies at Williams College. Following from the research results produced by the project, Cannon worked with the administration of Union Presbyterian Seminary and several foundations to establish The Center For Womanist Leadership at Union Presbyterian Seminary.

Cannon received the distinguished professor award from Spelman College, the Lucy Craft Laney Award at the Black Presbyterian Bicentennial Celebration, and was a professor-scholar honoree at the National Black Church Summit at Emory University. She received the Beautiful Are The Feet Award from the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. In 2018, Cannon was honored at the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s General Assembly, receiving the Excellence in Theological Education Award. Cannon died on August 8, 2018, from leukemia. Cannon's first full-length book, Black Womanist Ethics, published in 1988, was a groundbreaking text, and is considered to have launched the field of womanist ethics.

Publications God's Fierce Whimsy: The Implications of Feminism for Theological Education. Pilgrim Press, 1985 Inheriting Our Mothers' Gardens: Feminist Theology in Third World Perspective. Letty M. Russell, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, Kwok Pui-lan, and Katie Geneva Cannon, editors. Westminster John Knox Press, 1988. . Katie's Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community. Continuum, 1998. . Published in 1998 by the Continuum International Publishing Group, Cannon argues the importance of womanism from a religious, literary and political perspective. Through a series of essays, Cannon continually reviews the role that gender, race and class have held in the formation of black feminist consciousness. Through looking at the intersection between African American women's lived experience of oppression, and faith, Cannon explains how African American women how found themselves in a position of moral guides not just in the African American tradition but also America. Black Womanist Ethics, Oxford University Press, 1988 Teaching Preaching: Isaac Rufus Clark and Black Sacred Rhetoric. Continuum, 2007. . Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader. Katie Geneva Cannon, Emilie M. Townes, and Angela D. Sims, editors. Westminster John Knox Press, 2011. . The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology, Oxford University Press, 2014 Katie's Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community, 25th Anniversary Revised and Expanded Edition. Fortress, 2021. .

Death Cannon died from acute leukemia in Richmond, Virginia on August 8, 2018. She was 68.