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First African American women, along with Sallie Crenshaw, to receive full-clergy rights.

Nora E. Young, like Sallie Crenshaw, served several years as a lay pastor in the East Tennessee Conference of the MC when women were not permitted to become full conference members. Her first appointment was in 1949, when she became the pastor of three churches in the West Virginia section of the conference. When she and Sallie Crenshaw were received into full connection in the East Tennessee Conference in 1958, they became the first women in the Central Jurisdiction, in the Holston Conference, and in all of the Southeastern Jurisdiction to be received into full connection.

All of Nora’s pastoral appointments were in West Virginia–the last one at St. Luke Methodist Church in War, West Virginia, until 1961. Little more is known of Nora Young as her ministry was discontinued in 1964.

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