While COVID-19 safety protocols prevented them from participating in a June 2020 Black Lives Matter march, members of the Adrian Dominican Sisters' general council and other sisters showed their support of the march as it passed in front of the motherhouse in Adrian, Michigan. The archivist for the Adrian Dominicans has preserved photos of the Black Lives Matter protests as well as the community's social justice statements made during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Courtesy of the Adrian Dominican Sisters)
When the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, historians and journalists scoured documents for information on the World War I-era disaster that was dubbed the Spanish flu of 1918-19, seeing it as the closest historical parallel to the new lockdowns and hundreds of thousands of deaths.