Long shot. (in person).

JUST MORE THAN A YEAR AGO, AS SHE TOOK HER PLACE AT the podium in front of a packed house at Staples Center in Los Angeles, Sister Mary Paul Lee could think of only one thing: Wow, this is where the Lakers play.

It was indeed sacred ground for the 72-year-old Oblate Sister of Providence, a self-proclaimed passionate sports fan and former high school basketball guard and coach. She had traveled to the West Coast from her home in Baltimore to represent the heartbeat of African American Catholic women and to deliver an impassioned speech to 5,000 Catholics gathered at a national conference.

"I looked out and saw where the basketball court was and thought, I did it. I didn't give up," says Lee, whose lifelong mission has been to fight oppression, in general, and to raise up the voices of black Catholic women, in particular. "I thought about how proud my dad would be. And then I thought about how far we still have to go."

Indeed, it was a bittersweet moment for Lee, whose grandfather was a slave owned by the Jesuit priests at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. But racism isn't just ancient family history for Lee. As a junior at a Philadelphia Catholic high school she made the varsity basketball team but wasn't allowed to travel to an away game in Baltimore. She recalls the letter sent to her school, which stated: "Negroes are not allowed, even as spectators, in our gymnasium." She stayed home and cried, while the rest of her team hopped on the bus to travel to the game.

But from her personal hero, her father, she learned tenacity and perseverance--and hope. Lee remembers her father encouraging her and her 11 brothers and sisters "to always do as much as we could for our people. He told us to never disgrace our race and to be loyal to the Catholic Church." Most significantly, she says, "he taught us to never give up--that there would always be hope for black Catholics in our church."

It was a lesson she clung to, despite a history of personal oppression that often tested her own faith.

At 18, when she switched her career ambition from chemistry to religious life, she was turned down because none of the orders in her archdiocese would accept an African American. Lee ended up joining the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the Catholic Church's first order of women religious of African ancestry. Later, teaching in the Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina, she was paid less than the white religious teaching there. During the most turbulent days of the civil rights movement, she was once told by a white priest that she had to move and sit in a special section of the church. She recalls countless times when she or other African Americans were skipped at the Communion rail, relegated to the last pew, denied a Catholic education or service in a Catholic hospital, or barred from seminary.

Today Lee is a retired math and science high school teacher who works full time as community relations coordinator for Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore. In that role, she seeks funding for and sets up health and nutrition education programs for the city's impoverished.

During the 1970s and '80s, Lee served as the chairperson for the Baltimore archdiocesan urban commission. "I worked in many ethnic neighborhoods--with the Polish and Italians, where people just didn't deal with black people, so some were very frightened and threatened by me," says Lee. "But when I retired, each of the churches in those neighborhoods made me a photo album and thanked me for what I had done for their church and their schools."

These days Lee says there is still a long way to go, but she is optimistic. "Fighting racism can only be done by working soul by soul," she says. "There are many signs of hope. We have to all learn to do the small things we can to make this happen."

SISTER MARY PAUL LEE, O.S.P.

TEACHER/COMMUNITY RELATIONS COORDINATOR

PARISH: I go to a different one every week

I FEEL CLOSEST TO GOD WHEN: I'm doing my work

I'D LOVE TO MEET: Mother Mary Lange, foundress of my order

WHEN I ENCOUNTER RACISM IN THE CHURCH: I try to fight it

THE BEST WAY TO FIGHT RACISM IS: To live my life in a way that sets a good example

WHAT SUSTAINS ME DURING DIFFICULT TIMES: The memory of my grandfather, who was a slave for the Jesuits

IF I WERE POPE: I'd ordain women to solve the priest shortage 

ONE THING I WANT TO DO BEFORE I DIE: Bring other African Americans into the church

MARY BETH SAMMONS, a freelance writer living in Palatine, Illinois.