If you grew up on Sister Act 2, you remember Whoopi Goldberg whipping a raggedy high school choir into shape and bringing down the house with Lauryn Hill and Tonya Blunt’s “Joyful, Joyful.” What you might not know is that the film was inspired by a real Black woman doing that exact work in South Los Angeles.
Meet Dr. Iris Stevenson-McCullough. Known to her community as “Mama Mac,” she is the choir director from Crenshaw High School whose story caught Hollywood’s attention. In 1991, she was one of hundreds of L.A. public school teachers at risk of losing their jobs during a mass layoff. But instead of going quietly, she fought back publicly against the school board. Film producer Dawn Steel took notice and used the story as inspiration for the 1993 musical comedy that became a cultural classic.
But Dr. Stevenson-McCullough is bigger than the movie. She was recruited by the Los Angeles Unified School District to teach at Crenshaw in 1985. Over the decades that followed, she built the Crenshaw Elite Choir into an internationally recognized program, taking students who had never left their neighborhood to perform across Europe, the West Indies, Asia, and Africa. The choir performed at the Playboy Jazz Festival alongside the Los Angeles Philharmonic and at a world premiere at the Hollywood Bowl.
She’s also the one who taught the actors in Sister Act 2 her arrangement of “Joyful, Joyful,” the song that became the film’s most iconic moment. Sing it with us “Fill us!”
Beyond Hollywood, Dr. Stevenson-McCullough is a gospel music legend. She was inducted into the International Gospel Music Hall of Fame alongside artists like Kurt Carr and Take 6, and she has been a fixture in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) community for decades. She even worked with BTS during their 2014 reality show American Hustle Life, coaching the K-pop group on gospel music.
In 2014, after taking the Crenshaw Choir to perform at the White House for President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, Dr. Stevenson-McCullough was suspended by the school board for 120 days for taking an unsanctioned trip. The community rallied to her defense, with former students and civil rights leaders protesting outside the school, demanding her reinstatement.
Through it all, she kept teaching, kept directing, and kept pouring into young people through music. France honored her by renaming a fine arts building after her. And Crenshaw High School dedicated its music wing in her name. She’s a literal living legend!
The next time you watch Sister Act 2 and start singing along during that final performance, just know there’s a Black woman from Crenshaw who made it all possible.
