Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Executive Producer Gates is one of the most prominent and well-known academics in the United States today. He has drawn the world's attention to Harvard's Afro-American Studies program since he took over as its chair, and his reputation has been solidly built on several fronts as well. As a critic and editor, Gates contributed to broadening the discourse on African American literature with books such as Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self and The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. He also wrote the introductions for two books by Thomas Roma, the collaborating photographer for LET THE CHURCH SAY AMEN: Come Sunday and Sanctuary. Gates has been instrumental in changing the literary canon in U.S. education and bringing literary history to light through the numerous critical texts and republished works he has edited, as well as lost manuscripts he has discovered. Beyond this, Gates has narrated a major PBS documentary on Africa and co-edited a Pan-African encyclopedia on CD-ROM.

David Petersen Director/Producer/Editor Petersen's films about self-sustaining communities have been exhibited at numerous international museums and festivals, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of American History and The Library of Congress. His Academy Award-nominated documentary Fine Food, Fine Pastries, Open 6 to 9 received first place prizes in numerous international film festivals and won an Emmy and a CINE Golden Eagle award. His PBS documentary If You Lived Here You Would Be Home Now premiered at The National Gallery of Art and won a CINE Golden Eagle Award and was an Independent Spirit Award Nominee. His film I Run and Feel Rain: Scenes won a 1993 Rosebud Festival Award, and he has produced various programs for PBS. As an editor, his credits include Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, Roger and Me, City at Peace and numerous investigative documentaries for the PBS Frontline series. As a writer, Petersen received commissions from the Broadway performance art group Squonk Opera and the La Jolla Theater Company. His screenplay, I Run and Feel Rain, was optioned by Miramax. He has received artist fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and The Ragdale Foundation. Petersen currently teaches at New Jersey City University.

Mridu Chandra Producer Chandra has had her films exhibited at numerous international festivals and museums, including the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum, the Kennedy Center, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights Film Program and the World Social Forum 2004 in Mumbai, India. In addition to producing LET THE CHURCH SAY AMEN, a 2004 Sundance Official Selection, she co-produced Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, a feature-length documentary portrait of the late civil rights and peace activist. A 2003 Sundance Official Selection, Brother Outsider has won numerous awards. A member of the CPB/WGBH Producers Academy, she has served as producer, associate producer and assistant editor on a variety of PBS productions in New York. Her writing appears in The Brooklyn Rail. She has a master's degree from the University of Chicago and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Thomas Roma
Collaborating Photographer
Twice the recipient of Guggenheim Fellowships, Roma's work has appeared in one-person and group exhibitions internationally, including one-person shows with accompanying books at the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography. His books include Come Sunday, Found in Brooklyn, Sunset Park and Higher Ground. His work is in numerous collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal. Roma is currently the Director of Photography at Columbia University, as well as a founding contributing photographer for DoubleTake magazine.

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