- Just ahead on "American Black Journal," we're gonna take a look back at some of the conversations we had in 2025.

We'll have highlights from discussions on current issues in the community, African Americans in the arts, and of course, our ongoing series on the Black church in Detroit.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy this special episode of "American Black Journal."

- [Announcer] Across our MASCO family of companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work, and do business.

MACSO, a Michigan company since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Presenter] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Announcer] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(bright music) - Happy New Year, and welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

As we begin 2026, we're looking forward to bringing you another year filled with interesting guests and thought provoking conversations about the issues that have an impact on the African-American community.

Today we're taking a look back at some of the conversations we had during last year's episodes.

Let's start with our segments on Black military veterans, gun violence, and the 100th anniversary of the Dr.

Ossian Sweet civil rights trial.

It was 100 years ago when Dr.

Ossian Sweet, an African American physician, moved his family into a White neighborhood on Detroit's east side.

Shortly after, an angry White mob gathered, and threw rocks and bottles at Dr.

Sweet's house.

One of the attackers was shot and killed, and the subsequent murder trial for Dr.

Sweet made civil rights history.

- The Detroit Police Department comes in, they arrest everybody, charged them with first degree murder.

It's not just Dr.

Sweet and his wife, but there are 11 people in this group.

So the NAACP intercedes, hires Clarence Darrell.

Darrell comes to Detroit, stands before Frank Murphy, and affirms a man's home is his castle, whether he's White or Black.

And this trial begins at the end of October, runs all the way through Thanksgiving.

The turning point of the case is when they asked Dr.

Sweet to testify, and the co-counsel, Arthur Garfield Hayes, asked him the poignant question, "What did you think when you saw the crowd?"

And Dr.

Sweet says, "When I opened the door and I saw the mob, I realized that I was facing the same mob that had hounded my people throughout this entire history.

In my mind, I was pretty confident of what I was up against.

I had my back against the wall, filled with a peculiar fear, the fear of one who knows the history of my race.

I know what mobs had done to my people before."

And with that testimony, he would tell the story of how African Americans have had to struggle with mob violence ever since we've been in this country- - Forever.

- Right?

And that was the first time that that all White male jury had an opportunity to take off their rose colored glasses and see the world in black and white, the same way Black people saw it, and understand the psychology of the defendants when that mob came.

And that was a turning point that after that case, after that trial, Murphy would turn the case over to the jury.

They would come back with no decision.

Murphy would declare it a mistrial, throw the case out.

And then in April, Dr.

Sweet's younger brother, Henry, would be retried because he's the one who actually testifies that he shot into the mob.

But after two hours, the jury would come back with a not guilty verdict.

- Earlier this month, Church of the Messiah, led by Pastor Barry Randolph, held its 18th annual Silence the Violence march and rally.

The event honors innocent shooting victims, and brings together Detroit residents, law enforcement, and lawmakers to find ways to end the gun violence in our cities neighborhoods.

"American Black Journal" contributor, Daijah Moss, was there, and she produced this report.

(crowd chatters indistinctly) (upbeat percussion music) - We see you.

That's why we do this.

We see you.

We do this so the world can see.

And one Saturday in June, we gotta take it to the street.

- My son, Khalil Allen, was killed July 12th, 2023.

I'm really focused right now on the young people, the young people that are in gangs, the young people that have stepped out of gangs, what they're missing, and what I can do to pour in and fill.

It's one thing to ask them to put the gun down, put the stick down, but what are we doing as a community to pour back into them?

- It's definitely kind of like disturbing in a way, 'cause how it's so normal to us, especially with social media, how you can scroll and see senseless violence and stuff like that, easily.

So, but over time, doing stuff like this, it helped overpower and change the narrative for real.

- My best friend was killed, and it was over something petty, you know?

And they followed him to his mother's home and shot him in front of the home, and his parents had to find him.

Aside from that tragic story and how it makes me feel, you can see it's bothering me now to this day, and that was almost 20 years ago, but it still hurts.

I still think of him, his child, and the people we grew up around, and how easy it was, or I don't wanna say easy, I want to say how common it was.

The violence was so common to us that we just became comfortable with it, and that's the scary part.

- One of my brothers was murdered in prison.

My other brother, he was a part of some violence in the community, and my father, he committed suicide the day after Thanksgiving.

So gun violence is not just something that's just, oh, random.

These things are happening to us every single day that we carry.

And I could be mean and mad and angry about the things that have affected my family, but I choose to stand against gun violence so that the things that have happened to me and my family don't happen to somebody else and their families.

- [Protester] Silence the violence.

- As we observe Veterans Day, we're taking time to honor the legacy of African Americans who served in the United States armed forces.

My first guests are members of the Detroit chapter of Tuskegee Airmen Incorporated.

- The Korean War was a little different as far as the wars are today.

When I was in Korea, I was stationed at Kimpo Korea.

For those who have been to Korea, it's K-14.

Now in Korea, the war was close to the time that the United States Air Force was formed.

It was formed in 1947, and a lot of the NCOs and officers that were in the Air Force at that time were leftovers from the old Army Air Corps.

And some of them were from the Deep South, and they brought their prejudices with them.

However, the Air Force changed as time progressed.

- Started off in Virginia, where I received my registered nurse license, and this was in the forties.

However, it was a school, called Hampton, Virginia, Dixie Hospital.

It was segregated.

And when I say segregated, we had a couple of Black nurses as instructors, but most of our instructors were White and of German nature.

And so I did get more involved in the surgical aspect that was with my interest.

However, because of certain rules, even our dialect had to be changed because Virginia was one of those states that believed in segregation, which means it was a difference between the classes of people.

And when I went for the surgical classes in the operating room, and I encountered from one of my German instructors, and she had asked me to do some technique, and my response to her was, "Yes, Ms.

Gammage."

And she grabbed me by the back of my gown in operating room, snatched me back.

I think if I hadn't have been tiptoed, I would have probably fallen.

However, her problem was, I said, "Yes, Ms.

Gammage," and she blurted out, "You don't say yes to me.

You say, yes Ma'am to me."

- "American Black Journal" has been on Detroit PBS for 57 years.

Throughout that time, we've had conversations with talented African Americans in the arts.

Last year was no different.

We continued to shine a light on African American culture with guests who included the 2025 Kresge Eminent Artist, a groundbreaking tenor, the world's most recorded jazz bassist, and a "New York Times" bestselling author.

- I began my career as an actor.

Like that's where I started, at a place called Virginia Tech, and I auditioned for plays and didn't get cast.

And I said, "Okay, well, I gotta figure this out."

And so I began writing plays to cast myself.

So the writing happened as a result of that.

- Yeah, yeah.

44 books.

I mean, that is an incredible number.

Prolific is the word that keeps coming to mind, but there are also the range of things that you're writing about is really broad.

Talk about how you get inspiration for these books, and for each one, what's the thing you're trying to accomplish with it?

- I think ultimately, as Langston Hughes said, "I'm trying to distill my human heart into a few words on the page," and sometimes that heart is filled with longing and love, and so a love story or a love poem might come out.

Other times it's my two-year-old who won't stop crying, and so I play some jazz music and she stops crying, and so I say, well, let me write a book about Duck Ellington and Mules Davis, and teach her about jazz.

So it really is about what I'm feeling, what I'm experiencing, what I'm thinking, what I'm dealing with, sort of the woes and the wonders of life, and it comes out in various ways.

(buoyant cello music) - So you started playing the cello at the age of 10, and then switched to bass at CAST Tech High School, and you were classically trained throughout that time and all the way during your time at Eastman, and you transitioned to jazz.

What made you transition to jazz?

- I started about 12 playing the cello.

I was a cellist for a really long time.

And I was a cellist until my senior year at CAST Tech.

And I noticed that two things were happening.

The sharp.

One, when the PTA meetings and teacher faculty meetings would have meetings, conventions, they would go around to the Detroit School Music Department and pick out some music ensembles to forth, what we call wallpaper music, during these conventions.

As an African American kid, I never got those offers, and I thought I played good as everybody else.

And I was very good at math.

I looked around one day and the bass player in the orchestra was graduating, and if he left, there'd be no bass player.

And my initial instinct says, no one left but me playing the bass, then they'll have to call me.

And so Eastman School of Music was having auditions at this time for incoming freshman students for the coming fall term, and I got a chance to audition as a bass player, and he decided that I was a good candidate to get a scholarship to go to Eastman as a bass player.

So my classical training went from CAST Tech, underrepresented of a person of color, to Eastman School of Music with bitter odds of getting a chance to play music that I had been studying all my life as a classical player.

And as I'm at Eastman, now third year, fourth year, I'm still getting better and better instrument.

I'm realizing I'm feeling the same kind of draft.

And that's to say that they post notices on the bulletin board, but they've never explained to the people of color what that really meant for them as far as jobs.

- I started teaching music, choral music in the Detroit public schools, 1955, when I graduated from Wayne.

Started teaching at Miller High School.

And I've often said I had my job, I mean, I didn't ask for it, and my supervisor, who, feisty Irish woman, named Marvel O'Hara, went to the Board of Education when she found out there was an opening at Miller High School for an emergency substitute.

I hadn't graduated yet.

I didn't ask her to do this.

I didn't know, but she went to the Board of Education and they gave me the job.

Where did that come from?

- Right, right.

- And so I had my job.

My future wife and I were planning on getting married in August of 1956.

- Wow.

- And Uncle Sam sent me a letter in May of 1956 saying, "You're going to be married to me in June.

- [Stephen] (laughs) Right.

- Now Korea had ended, The draft is still alive.

And I said, "What is this about?

The Army's the last place I want to go."

- Yeah.

- But I had to go.

Life, I believe in a higher intelligence.

He's created everything.

Life works in mysterious ways.

For me to go into the Army was a curse, but it turned out to be a blessing.

- Yeah, but it eventually brought you back.

- Because it was a place that I was convinced to consider becoming a professional singer.

- One of the wonderful things about growing up in Detroit has, well, first of all, I should give complete credit to my parents.

My parents, Marian Ford, Hayden Thomas, she ended up getting remarried after my father passed, and Herbert E. Hayden and our little house that we grew up in, and the wonderful neighborhood of Russell Woods on Fullerton Street, and they were just wonderful parents.

They never put any restrictions on me as a young woman, as a girl, as to what girls could do.

My mother was a chemist, so she knew no boundaries of that sort.

So, well, I just started taking cello lessons when I was about nine in our great Detroit public school music education programs, but I also lived, oh, the public school music programs are so important.

And I'm always on my little bandwagon.

I'm always standing on my soapbox about continuing to support them for the young people that are in school now.

And so I was a little girl, taking lessons in my school.

Took Coachella lessons at nine, and then when I got tall enough to stand up to the bass, 'cause I've always wanted to play bass, I was about 12.

I switched over to bass, and I had a lot of jazz in my household, care of my dad, who was a huge jazz fan, and record collector, and kind of a closeted jazz pianist.

He was really good.

(dramatic cello music) - 2025 was our fifth year bringing you monthly episodes that focus on the Black church in Detroit.

We've covered a really wide range of topics with an incredible group of African American religious leaders.

The series is produced in partnership with the Ecumenical Theological Seminary, and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

Here are some highlights from last year.

Women have long been the backbone of the Black church, and during the great migration, women organized church groups and helped build close knit communities.

- Translation of the South and the activities in the way people were living, coming north, they had to do some adjusting.

So they did social things, they did feeding programs, and church was really the hub where everyone could go, where everyone met.

I remember even recently, someone said to me, (chuckles) a lady said, "I haven't said this in a long time to anybody."

And I said, "What?"

She said, "Your slip is hanging."

They made sure social things were happening.

They made sure you had your adjusted, not just in the social world and how to, you know, maneuver, but they were also dealing with the economics of families.

They dealt with the political institutions.

They actually were the backbone of the church.

And even today, you know, the church still survives because somebody's grandmother or great grandmother sat in and came up and then said, "Oh no, this is what we must do."

They taught Sunday school, you know, whatever the need was.

And when they saw families struggling, they would step in and make sure the family was adjusting.

- This idea that the Black church is a safe space for our young people to, first of all, talk about mental health and then find support.

I'm not sure that everybody necessarily realizes what that means, or how that plays out.

So I wanna give each of you a chance to talk about what you see in terms of young people in the Black church confronting this crisis in mental health.

Bishop, I'll start with you.

- Okay.

So I've served as a youth pastor many years before I became senior pastor, so I've always had an eye for young people and their mental health.

But over the years, I learned that the church doesn't have to do everything.

The church has to be a safe space.

So currently, we have several organizations that have housing at the Shrine who come to us, right, to offer different kinds of services.

But certainly a listening circle, a place where they can come and share and talk is very therapeutic, especially in times like these.

So we try to provide that on a regular basis.

- [Stephen] What does that look like at Hartford?

- Well, it looks like quite few things.

First and foremost, it starts with Black liberation theology, saying that God made everyone, and when he made us, we were good, we are good.

So that helps us to strengthen the self-love of our young people.

And then also, we have a number of different fellowships, not only with the youth alone, the teens alone, the youth and the teens together, but also throughout the generation so that we can combat isolation as well.

And then of course, we have a number of different programs, a number of partners, but even in our teen church and our youth church, it's such a small gathering around a table where we can look the students in the eyes, where we can say, "Hey, this week feels a little bit different.

Can we chat for a little bit?"

So it's really increasing that personal connection, and reminding ourselves that the Bible says, "God puts the lonely in families."

We have no clue what individuals experienced during the pandemic, but now we can say, hey, let's work to make sure that you're exactly where you need to be, and getting better.

- Black music is American music, and so much of that is true because of the roots of spirituals and gospel.

It's 2025 though, and of course, we arrived here on this continent many centuries ago with that music and with those traditions.

Let's talk about what that looks like now and how it may be different, how the influence may be different than it has been in the past.

Dr.

Pollard, I'll start with you.

- Oh, okay.

The influence on the community?

- Sure.

- Well, it continues in some interesting ways.

Jamal Roberts just won on American... - Yeah, Idol.

- Idol, right?

And he was singing gospel songs.

He had earlier been on "Sunday Best" where he had not won, but Kurt Franklin had encouraged him to just, you know, connect with the audience.

And he had so many votes on "American Idol" that I think it means that people don't just brush gospel music to to the side, because it sounds great, and many of them embrace the message of it.

There are other places, of course, where we can see it, of course, in TV shows and movies.

I don't know, sometimes I look up and I'm like, wait a minute, you guys are singing, "Oh, Happy Day?"

Okay.

(laughs) (Stephen laughs) It's almost recorded all these years ago, 55 years ago, and you're still singing that?

But it still has an influence on so many people.

- We can go back to the beginnings of Black Gospel music as we know it.

Our accredited father, Thomas Dorsey, was a blues player.

- Blues musician.

- And worked with Ma Rainey, you know, one of the great mothers of the blues.

And they would throw him out of the church for that gospel blues that we now term as the sound of Black gospel music.

- Traditional.

- Yeah, traditional.

You could go classic and go to James Cleveland, and then go find your way to Edwin, and Walter Hawkins, and Andre Crouch, who were, at sometimes, bastardized for the sounds that they brought that then, at some point later, they called, oh, then now that's gospel.

- Yeah, uh huh, right.

- And then of course, Kurt Franklin sampling.

You know, hip hop, and rap, and stomp, and they said, "Now that's gospel now," you know?

So we're always going to be flipping, but the same thing happens with rhythm and blues, R and B, because they booed Whitney at the Soul Train Awards for a sound that they felt wasn't truly R and B, you know?

I think it's so funny, but I think it's good to allow for the dialogue about what our sounds are, and what they are continuing to evolve.

- [Stephen] I was gonna say, it's still evolving.

So where is it headed now?

- Well, let's just say the biggest selling gospel female is C.C.

Winans, but I have academic friends who will not be named, who think because some of her music is categorized as CCM, contemporary Christian music, and not categorized as gospel, they're like, "I just can't play that anymore.

I'm just not gonna share that anymore."

And so you're talking about the sounds, but there are others, and Tasha Cobbs Leonard, and there are many others who also embrace CCM and gospel music, but we have, some of us have in our head, if it doesn't sound like the day I got saved, okay?

(everyone laughs) It can't really be gospel music.

- Of course, you can see these entire conversations and more at americanblackjournal.org.

We thank you for being loyal viewers.

Let us know what's on your mind by connecting with us anytime on social media.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Across our MASCO Family of Companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work, and do business.

MASCO, a Michigan company since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Presenter] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Announcer] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(bright music)