Sandra Ann O'Neale

Sondra A. O’Neale was born on September 28, 1939, in Chicago, Il. Her mother, Edna White, had her live with childhood friends the majority of her childhood. Although Sondra O’Neale lived in abject poverty, she was extremely intelligent and saw education as a way to dig herself out of poverty. Her intelligence earned her a scholarship to Howard University where she pledged Delta Sigma Theta. Even though Sondra A. O’Neale earned a scholarship to Howard University, she was so poor that she said in her own words, “I couldn’t even afford [women’s sanitary products].” She was forced to drop out of school and joined the Armed Forces to receive the GI Bill.

After serving her country, Dr. O’Neale returned to college and earned a BA from Asbury College in English and continued her education earning her PhD in African American Literature from the University of Kentucky-Louisville. While earning her degrees, Dr. O’Neale married Leonard H. O’Neale and began a family. She gave birth to three children Teresa Lynn O’Neale, Nancy Michele O’Neale, and Leonard Michael O’Neale. 

Dr. O’Neale prided her family and educating her children. All three of her children attended college including her oldest child Teresa O’Neale, who graduated with a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and ABD from Wayne State University, her daughter Nancy M. O’Neale, who graduated with a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a MA from Wayne State, and a MA from Grand Canyon University in Elementary Education. Her son,Leonard Michael O’Neale, attended Wayne State University.

She also raised a Christian family raising her three children with Christian morals and values. She was an ardent reader and studied the Word of God and was a self-taught Bible teacher. Over the years, she held different Bible study groups at her home. She not only studied the Bible; she also lived it. With her compassion for the poor, her children would often come home from school to find a homeless person she found on the street that day,who would stay at their home temporarily.

In addition to her love for the poor, lost, and disenfranchised, Dr. O’Neale continued to teach college students at various universities, including Emory University where she spent the majority of her career, the University of California San Diego, the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse where she was the Chair of Women’s Studies, and Wayne State University where she retired as the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Sondra O’Neale mostly enjoyed teaching Biblical Studies and Women’s Studies to college students.

Dr. Sondra O’Neale marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., in her younger years and had friends such as James Baldwin who frequented her family’s home. She was also an arduous writer publishing many scholarly works on writers such as Phyllis Wheatley, and contributed to the anthology: Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition. 

Dr. O’Neale also began a small Christian church called the Good News Christian Center, alongside her then husband Leonard H. O’Neale. When her daughter Teresa O’Neale graduated, she joined the Peace Corps in the now Congo, formerly Zaire, where Teresa met her husband Dr. Berthollet Bavibidila. Teresa’s service in the Peace Corp opened the door for Dr. O’Neale to minister the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to Africa. Dr. O’Neale ministered in Zaire, South Africa, the Ivory Coast and also in Haiti. 

Dr. O’Neale spent almost her entire life fighting for the rights of others. Nancy O’Neale, the last family member to see her alive a day before she passed away, credits her mother for her and her siblings’ incredible work ethic and love for Jesus Christ. Nancy O’Neale became a teacher, minister, writer, and business woman to carry on her mother’s legacy as a teacher, writer, minister, business woman, and lover of mankind. She will forever live in all of our hearts because she had such an impact and left such an impression on everyone she met. Dr. O’Neale pulled her family from poverty to the middle class and is a testament that the American dream is still alive and real. 

Her service will be held this Sunday, September 14, 2025, at James H. Cole Funeral Home located at 2624 W. Grand Blvd., in Detroit at 3:30 pm. The funeral procession from James H. Cole Funeral Home to Elmwood Cemetery will be held on Monday, September 15, 2025, at 10 am.