i'm henry lewis gates jr i'm thrilled to welcome you to this local event for our newest series the black church this is our story this is our song exploring the 400 year old history of the black church in america you'll be transported by the songs by preaching styles and by beliefs and actions that drew african americans from the violent margins of society to the front lines of change i'm honored to have the support of your local station thank you for being here today welcome everyone on behalf of louisiana public broadcasting and louisiana's hbcu advisory council we would like to thank you for joining us for this safe socially distant virtual black history month event i am robin merrick and tonight with our wonderful panel of experts we will explore the role of louisiana's black church from the civil rights movement to the music and even talk a bit about the future of the church this is all in anticipation of the pbs two-part series the black church this is our story this is our song from henry lewis gates jr which premieres on lpb next tuesday and wednesday at 8pm and you're going to get a sneak peek at that series in just a moment but first a man who knows a great deal about the black church our special guest this evening dr samuel c talbert jr president of the national baptist convention of america international and pastor of the greater saint mary missionary baptist church in lake charles louisiana good evening dr talbert and welcome thank you very much and good evening to you dr merritt so very glad that you can join us on this special occasion uh this evening to talk about something i know you know a great deal about and i'd like to ask you first do you think we need a series like this one and if so why i think we need a series like this on the black church especially in louisiana because the black church has is and shall remain an important institution in our society the black church has spiritually nurtured our communities motivated educational pursuits and achievements that have produced outstanding leaders and activists uh around our state and around our nation it has been an organization that has provided for the network of entrepreneurship and constituency investment the civil rights movement in particular would not have been as successful without the black church in louisiana that had leaders like the late reverend dr theodo judson jemison that organized the bus boycotts in baton rouge that were used as a model around the south and so the church is is still needed as she provides for the fostering of the growth and development of our communities for generations to come from the institution of grade schools classes in sunday school classrooms to the birth and support of historically black colleges the black church has been responsible for the establishment of credit unions licensed day care centers tutoring support and even adult education classes for high school drop dropouts i am grateful for the contribution of the black church in louisiana and all it has done even to support me personally as i say that tonight i am now the pastor of the historically black church uh greater saint mary missionary baptist church that i grew up in and now i have been serving as the pastor for some 37 years i now lead one of the largest black church organizations in the world the national baptist convention of america international because of the black churches training and nurture that i've received right here in louisiana so tonight i'm thankful for louisiana's black church thank you so much dr talbert and and as you just attested the black church is very unique with a remarkable and rich history what is one part of that history that you would like to see highlighted in this documentary what i would like to see highlighted in this documentary about the black church is the role that the black church plays not only in religion but the role that the black church plays in community uh our community is what it is in in the black communities because of the church is almost the centerpiece of our community and i'd like to see that highlighted in this documentary yes sir again thank you so much dr talbot for joining us this evening we're very grateful to have you here in your voice as you represent uh baptist members across this globe and of course the work that you're doing in lake charles louisiana and our prayers are still with you all in the community in lake charles as you continue to recover thank you very much for having me and i look forward to this series fantastic if anyone can take 400 years of history and tell it in four hours it's pbs and henry henry lewis gates jr on making this series henry gates said no social institution in the black community is more central and important than the black church the series is a riveting and systemic exploration of the myriad ways in which the african americans have worshipped god and how they continue to do so today so here's a sneak peek at the upcoming pbs series the black church this is our story this is our song wow that was powerful let's talk about it with our panelists who represent louisiana's historically black colleges and universities joining us on this exploration tonight are dr charles vincent professor of history and university historian southern university in a m college reverend herbert brisbane chaplain dillard university dr charlene senegal de queer chair history department xavier university of louisiana mr tarsha davis assistant professor of vocal music and choral director grambling state university if you have any questions for our panel this evening just type them in the chat box we might not be able to answer all of the questions but we are going to do as many of the questions as we can possibly get to i know you have a lot of questions on your mind a number of things swirling through your head as you've watched this uh preview of the documentary so many themes were explored this evening in this preview reel and unfortunately we won't be able to cover everything tonight uh but dr vincent i'm going to start with you um the civil rights movement louisiana churches were front and center in that movement uh the mount zion first baptist church in baton rouge little union and old galilee baptist churches in shreveport and so many are central to our story would you care to share a bit about that good evening i'll be happy to you exactly right um and one of the things that we should understand about these churches are that their leadership uh were trained individuals and many of these leaders were descendants of men such as reverend tj jemisons whose father david jennison had been trained that selma university in alabama had been a big leader and civil rights advocate in alabama and his son was continuing that tradition you mentioned uh some of the churches in sri for galilee and uh new canaan and uh good hope all of these churches had traditions of resistance segregation and they pushed for justice for black people indeed uh many of these schools in fact at the start of power university there was in washington dc there was a big debate as to what should be the name of it whether should it be a theological normal school or should it be a liberal art college so these leaders of the schools and teachers and principals tried to apply what they learned in their religious training to see if we could connect with the teachings of jesus who talked about your neighbors uh as yourself be in thy brother's keeper so these churches with these trained leaders and educators and the same thing with the principals and teachers in many of our students they knew the constitution they knew the bible so they pushed for justice in their own way some more vividly and more openly and more noted than reverend tj jameson here but all of them in their own way tried to put in place programs and policies that talked about the dignity of human being justice for all uh you should be not harmful to your brother as the white community may have been in many of these communities but you should practice what you're preaching in your church and hence the parishioners took this out and some of them would become more outstanding leaders than others but all of them would certainly try to perpetuate the teachings of jesus christ in their daily life and to their parishioners thank you dr vincent uh with the current calls for social justice do you see churches answering that call not like they did in the past and this is this is for you dr senegal de queer i know you teach a course on hip-hop and social justice what do you think the role of the church is at this moment in time i think at this moment in time the church is really trying to find their role in the movement in this current new movement we're trying to figure out the church is trying to figure out how to navigate the young people and what their needs are and so i think right now our young people were they're looking for direction they're looking for someone to guide them but i do feel that the young people are grounded in their religious beliefs and in their faith and i believe that they understand the importance of the african-american church and i believe that they are looking towards that i know at xavier we have the mission of social justice and on our campus our students are extremely active um they go out into the community and they they march and they talk about the issues they tweet about it they use all of their social media platforms to do so and so the church is now again just they have to just move with these young folks they have to get with the new times with the new ages with the social media media movement and they need to progress along with our kids because our kids need that they need that grounding that only religion and only the black church can give us in order to sustain a movement to sustain a movement that i know that we're gonna have to you know carry on for it you know that's a good point you make about uh the impact of social media and i don't know if the full documentary is gonna touch on that but certainly uh social media has infused itself into every aspect of our lives and i would imagine like you said the churches is not uh sacred in that regard that it would be safe from the impact of social media so thank you for for that doctor synagogue to queer as we saw in the preview during the civil rights movement the importance of music in the black church and music has always been an important part of the church but not everyone realized the importance of gospel music in the fight for justice so miss davis uh our our singer of the group tonight gospel music was the soundtrack for the civil rights movement and it still continues to be a key component of worship what say you about that yes and i like the way you uh expressed that or used the term it was the soundtrack um that background that you hear even in this documentary the soundtrack of the old spirituals or the soundtrack of the call response the soundtrack of the old 100 at the beginning of worship services uh guide me over thy great jehovah appeal through this barren land all of those things have led to where we are musically we've moved from um soloists and duets and trios and quartet singers to huge mass choirs and now we're drifting in this um praise and worship mode and in this the midst of this pandemic we're um back down to groups of twos and threes and trios and quartets just to maintain social distancing but the music still stands um also the the wide variety of the sounds and the lush harmonies and the chords it all began speaking uh mainly from the negro spiritual and we've progressed through those freedom songs and now we're into gospel music and our contemporary gospel music still embraces um the traditions that we had from the beginnings you know i can just think about uh as we were preparing to have our conversation this evening thinking about some of the old negro spirituals and hymns that the moment you you strike just one verse uh you'll get the entire church going and that may be one of the chords uh no pun intended on chords uh but one of the chords that have run throughout history as it relates to the black church is our music uh some of the other things may have changed in terms of the delivery of what we do excuse me but what has not changed is is the music and the way the music moves us uh i would say excuse me it's moving me right now in my throat uh just thinking about it and i am definitely no singer uh and i wish we we could maybe have him or so here this evening and i'm going to move over to reverend brisbane uh with dillard university let me turn a bit to talk about the future of the church if we could uh in particular the engagement or or maybe even the lack thereof of our young people in attending church our recent pew research center study found that the biggest generational drop-off in regards to regular church attendance is with our millennials and so how do we get them back how do we how do we do that um some of that is going to have to require the church to get back to his missional origin and being in intentional about um creating opportunities for tangible um engagement many of them are not concerned about the history um the anniversaries or the mission days but they would like to see how do we get out there and become relevant and it's kind of interesting this past semester i taught a class entitled black church in america and one of the young ladies um and i had to go back and capture this piece because it spoke so relevant and she was just sharing about how um she was disappointed with the church and really wonder why were they doing this and it was um actually dealing with a food drive where the church had let just set the food outside and didn't care about the person and she was like why would you do that why if you say that you love someone why'd you why would you not value the person and so she took it upon herself to begin to um collect food and things of that nature to go out and meet the needs of the community and so they're looking for tangible witnesses they don't necessarily have to be in the church for four hours it's about now finding places where they can live out their faith and see the tangible witness of what it means to be a loving community um and not only that even with the prophetic voice they want to see how do we as a church then you say that we were founded on this premise you have you lost your heart before for injustices um and how do we then in turn begin to advocate for that because again that's going to be i would say those are two things that we really have to be intentional about recreating i wouldn't necessarily say recreating reconnecting to the main purpose and thrust of the church in today because even with my worship service on on sunday nights at 6 30 we call it the experience it's not just the traditional but it's about including everyone one of the pieces that they that's another piece that they talk about how can i come to a church that when i ostracize people when you're going to tell me that we serve a god of love but because you have those that are saying gender-loving those that may think a little bit different than ourselves why would i want to go to that church why would i want to spend my time there when i can still see god in um my activities of engaging my brother and sister who are just like me but at the end of time at the end of the day they just do something a little bit different than i do so how do um so the church is going to have to be truthful in addressing some things as was talked about a little bit in the um series thank you reverend bruce bond for that um we definitely want to keep this conversation going if you have any questions please uh place them in the chat and we're going to try to get to those as they come dr senegal to queer i want to come back to you uh you're at xavier university and louisiana is unique in so many ways and one of those ways is the large number of black catholics that we have here in our state and we probably outnumber any state and certainly the fact that we have a black catholic university the only one of its kind uh in the nation would you speak to the intersection of the black church and the catholic church in louisiana absolutely you know i could talk about this for about an hour but um the shark version is and i'll try to make it a short version the sharp version is um first of all the uniqueness of catholicism in the state of louisiana louisiana goes back to colonial colonialism the fact that louisiana was colonized by the french and then the spanish and then the french again and when they came over they bought the catholic faith with them and so when they came in and they bought the catholic faith with them they started to um convert their slaves to catholicism and so that's how we have the strong legacy of catholic church in louisiana and so louisiana is actually one of the states that has the largest numbers of black catholics because of that legacy going back to slavery and new orleans in particular is the largest um area where you have the black catholics and then next is lafayette and i belong to both of those parishes um to the diocese of new orleans and also to the diocese of lafayette and it's a really rich history i could tell you um in 1912 saint paul that catholic church was the second largest catholic church in the state and in the united states and from that church you had the creation of schools they had the saint paul catholic church which here's a fun fact dr norman c francis actually graduated from there and then went on to xavier university and so xavier university basically became a feeder school for all of the african-american catholic kids throughout the state of louisiana it was the only place where parents felt safe enough you know to bring to bring their kids and leave their kids there because they knew they were going to get an amazing education one and they're going to also be educated in the faith uh we had nuns there galore uh currently we only have two nuns right now that are still um on campus from the sisters of the blessed sacrament which is you know sad but um again that that's a that's a larger story but the history of the catholic church catholic church and black catholic and black catholicism is very very strong very strong in louisiana and that's the short term thank you for thank you for the short version i know i'm dealing with all academics here tonight and you all are used to uh speaking in an hour an hour and a half blocks of time to your classes so we do appreciate the abbreviated version uh as much as possible so we can get to our questions uh but dr senegal queer i did want to add um there's a question in the chat and that is uh from mr abram and he's asking was there a clash between the black catholics and other black denominations during the civil rights movement uh did we do we see a clash there or was it was it unified no there there was not a clash between any of the the churches they the religious affiliations at all i don't think that there was a clash there was a clash between catholics and themselves between black catholics and white catholics that's really the only clash that you did see but in terms of the civil rights movement and black catholics actually going out there to participate in the marches and in the struggle they absolutely did that but then if you look at what was happening in the church itself right so in the catholic church with african-american people coming into the priesthoods i think around 1948 there was about only 106 african-american um priests in catholic black priests in the united states um and another fun fact joseph francis uh brother of dr francis was actually the fourth bishop united states catholic bishop in um the united states and and so i think within the church they were there were struggles with the civil rights movement but the actual congress congressional congress congregants i'm sorry of the church they were very active okay thank you thank you for that uh this is the question for dr vincent uh if you will can you speak to the role of the black church um especially in rural communities post-emancipation so we're post-civil war slaves are freed what was the role of the black church particularly in rural communities not in our our cities black church was crucial it was the backbone in many of the rural communities basically because uh during slavery blacks want to learn how to read and they want to learn how to read the bible so once they did get access to education uh they would certainly try to spread it obtain it gain it in every way they possibly could and the rural areas was a little bit more difficult but normally as i was trying to say earlier that uh the leadership in these rural areas in many of our churches were normally the educated they were the individuals who were the teachers they may have been the preachers they may have been the head deacons so in the rural areas those who gain some education normally could be in leadership roles within the communities and within their churches now once again uh some of these rural churches may have only had church uh twice a week or uh twice a month or once a month so that inhibited uh they're in the word as often as they should but they gravitated towards whatever church was there because i think it was one of the speakers said on the documentary it was the armor that kept us sane you see uh and normally during slavery uh those individuals who had a chance to be in a church they always want the pastor to preach from the old testament because in the old testament you see god saving the people in a miraculous way uh moses that's why harry tubman is called the moses of her people because just like moses in the bible he led them across the red sea and david and the lion's den so in the rural areas you had the church and as our universities came online uh what i was saying about howard there was a question about at the origins of power what kind of institution it should be and then as howard got off running and started just like at southern uh many of the teachers the administrators had a strong religious connection in fact j.s clark had southern was called our pastor claw southern was almost seen as a religious refuge and if you had a chance to come to any of these campus with vesper and wednesday night services you had a chance to hear the word and those are mandatories at attendance even and so in the rural areas if you got graduates of grambling bishop southern alcorn state of jackson state you knew you had a way to connect educationally all as well as your christian faith but it was certainly a struggle in those rural areas uh because of transportation and communications and that factor but they gravitated to the church wherever it was in all of our communities and they were the centerpiece of those communities so dr vincent that's a good point you you bring up about um the the black church and the black universities which is one of the reasons we were connecting the two tonight in our conversation uh even though institutions like southern and grambling uh state are public institutions and not necessarily tied to a religious affiliation their roots were very much still rooted in faith uh i would say and and you saw the connection there to the church even though they were public institutions i think that's an important point to note uh in the formation of our black schools because everything really emanated from the church uh as as we will as we saw on the screener just now many things emanated in the black community from the church i did want to add a question that we we have in our chat coming from the audience another question is uh meeting missionary needs to live out our faith digital communities are growing beyond the pandemic so i think we're going to see this digital presence of church beyond the pandemic uh she's asking can we address the importance of the virtual black church community and i'll give that to you uh reverend brisbane if you would respond sure i think that's going to be um paramount if the black church plans to survive it's going to have to evolve and become contextually sound in its engagement with its constituents and i use constituents for um on purpose because at the end of the day they are the ones that's buying the jesus that you're selling and the question is how do you make it relevant for the individual and a lot of times our churches are dying because we refuse to become um contextually sound for um our communities and even for the young people and if you begin to look at the age of um of the civil rights it was a marrying of both young and old in order to continue to the movement and if the black church does not um become more intentional about communicating virtually they're going to miss an entire group of people because they're refusing to acquiesce they're refusing to get on zoom and i think about me being a united methodist ordained elder um and having served some um some very um seasoned churches i'll use that expression um and it it that's gonna be a major struggle across the board it doesn't matter if your method methodist baptist we all have our traditions that we're trying to hold on to but how do you become relevant for for now and one of the things that i love about jesus if you go back and look at jesus wherever he went he was able to become contextually sound wherever he was and are we doing a disservice by saying oh no we're just going to be on conference call oh no we're just going to be so how do we become relevant and that's going to be crucial in the days to come and really what helped to force that um into my attention was thanksgiving about six years ago sitting there with my cousins and um and it was a younger set of cousins and most i think they at the time the oldest was about 12 or 13 and every now and again i would hear snicker and i couldn't figure out why because my cousins that i grew up with and we're basically those millennials we're sitting there like what's going on and those of us in the black community know in the holidays you're accustomed to hearing the stories you're accustomed to hearing the laughter but for this younger generation that are 13 years my junior my sister and all of them um uh and so that um i then in turn snatch one of their phones like what are y'all doing we're talking and i'm like you're talking and it was like yeah we're texting one another i said no we gonna put the phone down we need to talk with one another and so that whole oral tradition is going to be lost if we're not careful and how do we reinforce that even though i advocate for the change but there has to be a balance between the two and and it's up to us to do that so how do we marry that because if it wasn't for elisha and elijah we would not have that you see what i'm saying and we can go on down and look at naomi and ruth it was someone always there to interpret and communicate what's going on and so that's going to be essential in days to come because this pandemic is not going anywhere and how do we then in turn address grief how do we address anxiety because if we are not meeting those needs there's going to be a massive exodus um because we're not being intentional about um being relevant and contextually sound to our young people or to those that are um virtually sound you know yeah i can go on and on and on about that but i'm hush no i understand it's great it's a great conversation but it piques the mind to talk about you know the notion of passing the stories down and how do we pass them down in a virtual context so we've got to be able to very marry up the old and the new in order to to continue to survive i think that's that's very important um i i want to switch gears just a little bit back to music because it's so so important in the black church and it's one of the things that i think in this pandemic environment that we're living in right now i can personally say i miss the most uh about the worship experience in that the black worship experience and that i don't have the rhythmic vibes of of the church anymore i'm in my house and i'm singing the song and it's not nearly as good as the choir uh and the musicians at the church so it's it's not the same so a portion of the title of the documentary this is our story this is our song is taken from a very old methodist hymn blessed assurance and i think i feel very confident that nearly everyone viewing this evening could immediately start humming that song or singing it uh blessed assurance jesus is mine uh this is my story this is my song you know it because you've been hearing it all your lives so this speaks to the power and influence of music in the church and i want this uh dr dr miss davis rather this is for you how do you think music uh may play a role in the sustenance of the church's future uh we've talked about some of the things that we need to do for the church's future but how will music sort of fit into that um in my mindset um coming from one musician's mindset music is not going anywhere um it's only going to progress and it's going to get better and in the church you know singing is necessary for worship the same way breath is for life we need that song we need that music we need the chords in some churches we need the beat of the drum in other churches we need the sound of that tambourine it draws on our emotions and we still need that in the future um music is only going to progress i think the sounds that are being created now by so many of the artists i'm like where do they get this from the talent that they've been blessed with and the skill set that they're learning as they progress through just music schools and just time and tutelage from other musicians and mentorship i can only imagine where it's going to be 10 years from now um it's relevant for the church it's relevant um that we have a nice worship set prior to the opening of scripture or text that's taken from the preacher because it prepares our heart to hear the word of god um where are we going to be in the future like he said a second ago reverend hey bear he said um how can it be relevant in our life how are we going to make it important especially for the youth how are we going to keep it relevant it's needed i'm not quite sure how to do it in this pandemic yes we're walking around humming and singing to ourselves and listening to old songs and when we get online we hear some of this new stuff and it still doesn't feel like it would feel if we were truly sitting in the house of god um i'm trusting that a day will come we'll get back to that point but right now you know our mindset of thinking how can we come together and come up with something in agreement that music is going to stay relevant and vital um even in today so miss davis uh i i'm sure being on a college campus you're familiar with uh dj nice and the things that he has done um at the beginning of the pandemic or throughout the pandemic he was doing these sort of um i guess you were calling them house parties uh on on facebook live do you envision us doing uh a dj nice version of the sort of the choir director and i know i'm marrying up the secular with the church but but he's very effective people have watched him and followed him uh throughout the pandemic so is that something that the black church may want to consider believe it or not you have a lot of artists that are doing night concerts sheds online i'll give you an example fred hammond does these concerts midnight concerts and he's actually posting things like every other week um tasha cobbs has done concerts a lot of secular artists have done concerts as well um they have to do things to say active some are free just so they can stay relevant um some cost a dollar or two or three um because you know people are are lacking in the finances right now um but yes what he did was very relevant it got people involved and i do foresee artists and musicians and even just having a a nice praise and worship team do an hour worth of music online that is it's happening it's happening so yes i do see that moving forward and becoming something that is um done on a regular if we stay in the midst in this pandemic as we are absolutely uh going to switch gears yet again because dr gates did touch on this and this is one of the questions that's in our audience chat um he touched on the role of women in the church and we see that women make up uh the majority of the lay people if you will in the church but the question is becoming you know how do we improve upon that and i'm assuming the question is about women in leadership it doesn't say that but i'm assuming that's what you're speaking to so dr senegal de queer um would you like to tackle that one absolutely and i could say um just as what was shown in the documentary you they always talk about how the church is the backbone are the pillar of the community and i would say that women are the backbone of that pillar okay and the reason is is because you know women are the organizers they're the ones that's fundraising they're the ones that are actually the true leaders of the church but traditionally they have always been pushed to the background and that has a lot to do as um dr gates said in the documentary uh with the gender norms and the whole claude of domesticity in america it not only placed uh black women in the background but all women in the black in the background right we were supposed to be the support staff to our man and so even with the civil rights movement we have been the heart of the movement the women have been the heart of the movement martin luther king jr would have never decided to tackle or to lead the montgomery bus boycott had it not been for coretta scott kin urging him to stand up for our people right and so it's always a black woman woman that is always there in the background pushing for more look at ella baker she said you know we are more than just a hamburger and all of those things but the thing is is that what we have to realize is that the leadership that of black women is needed in america we see kamala harris right now she's providing leadership in america but we've always had that strong leadership of black women um and i think it's now our time to shine i think it's finally come to the time where african-american men and men in general are ready to allow us to step into our light awesome thank you and i know there are many women who are watching this evening and will watch this documentary when it airs on next week uh particularly the the impact of kamala harris and what she's doing as our nation's first uh female vice president is going to speak volumes even over into to the church in other areas of leadership um i do have a question that something that came out as recently as last week and that is louisiana has uh now introduced its uh new civil rights trail uh here in louisiana and the black church is dotted throughout that trail dr vincent i know you worked with the uh lieutenant governor's office on the rollout of the civil rights trail for louisiana would you share with us a bit about the black church and its role in uh in particular as in the civil rights trail that we will see throughout the state yes and that was unveiled as you indicated a few days ago and it's a work in progress but many of the sites that are already extinct or existing are our churches so the trail tried to network with those sites that existed and so the churches are still there plymouth road mount zion of galilee up in shreveported canaan uh if they are not on there they'll probably be placed on it so we know the importance of the church in the civil rights movement we know that these buildings exist we know the names of the leaders of these congregations so that's a great avenue to get the community to come out and support the trail to be a part of the trail and to be able to reach and touch the trail uh the churches are as has been said the backbone of our communities uh the women as it's been said were instrumental in what happened at georgia politically uh and throughout the country uh so the church is a vital part of the trade there would be no trail had not churches stepped up to the plate and put forth with their leadership with the educational program with all that they did uh in the struggle in our communities indeed when i was growing up in the rural areas my elementary school was named damascus the church three blocks away was named the masters uh church of god in christ holiness and we played other little schools where the kids at saint peter and saint mars and antioch was actually in the church and the pews were used as deaths as they kneeled on their knees to write so these churches are violent educating us they are vital in providing this leadership and certainly they are a major part of this uh civil rights trail and this is the third bite of this apple and i've been at all of the bites of this alpha going back 35 years and i'm glad to see something come to fruition and i look forward to and i invite all of the listening audience to make suggestions because it's a work in progress and we have cutouts and we have other things that you can go and observe in this trail and on this trail thank you dr vincent uh he's right that trail is going to be very interpretive such that you're not just looking at something but you're able to actually see the story uh read about the story on the website as well as at the site itself uh so there's uh several ways to interact with that trail and i'm looking forward to it as well so thank you dr vincent for your work uh with the lieutenant governor's office and you as well dr senegal de queer um you all came together to help to launch that that yeah i add something to uh doctor what dr vincent just said yes i just want to say that there was a question about how you're going to keep the oral traditions alive well this is a way that louisiana is going to keep those oral traditions alive because if you go through and you go from one end of the state to the next in the state you can follow the markers and those markers will will allow you to have engage in conversations with your your children about what happened in louisiana and louisiana civil rights movement and how it impacted the united states and so i think this is extremely important um an extremely important thing you can put field trips around this and all of that the oral history will come out of out of this trail absolutely thank you for that uh thank you for that point and and to that also to that point we're very glad to be from one end of the state to the other with our panelists this evening representing new orleans baton rouge and even north louisiana with grambling state university we're very glad uh to have this partnership come together one last question in the chat box uh and that is mr clifford is asking at the onset of the converse of the onset of the conversion of africans to christianity our ancestors maintain an african spirituality and worship african gods in what ways have we sustained this synchronicity reverend bruce bond do you want to take that one yeah and i'm tossing it to you mr reverend bruce bond because uh the methodist connection with dillard and the ame influence has largely tried to capture all of that from its inception um one of the things that i love about our history even here at dillard and um something that i inherited upon my entrance here as the chaplain is our um freshman they have what we call a drumming ceremony this is one of the many ceremonies that we try to incorporate from our ancestors in helping them to cross over and it's more of the parents now handing the students off to us um in order to continue their matriculation into adulthood and um that's a ceremony is one of the more powerful ones and i mean if you think about some of us and some of the things that we do in our traditional um experiences there are things that we do um embrace um on a regular on a regular sunday morning just from the simple times of prayer um just connecting with simple um ancestral connections how do we pay homage to our ancestors or our elders those are things that we really embraced from um that african connection um and uh that's one of the things that i love that is near and dear to me so how do we make sure that there is a connection between those things because one of the pieces that we talk about in my class is looking at um uh african religion and and and putting it just opposing it against christianity and seeing how we incorporate some of those things into who we are the rights of passage um that we try to incorporate naming ceremonies and things of that nature so um those are just a few pieces that i know that we try to maintain on our campus as it relates to who we are and where we are and then just anchoring ourselves in a source of um connectivity of the god of us all um and that's one way i would say we try to um maintain some type of heritage i'm going to invite dr um uh decor um to share a little bit because i forgive me i mean i i could definitely agree with everything that you said um i also think that we try well in the in the catholic faith coming back from from slavery and everything we definitely had africans african slaves who masked their animistic faith within the catholic faith by still worshiping the same god and goddesses but just using the catholic saints um in you know in their place because actually there were a lot of god and goddesses or you know not but a lot of um those religious figures mirror merit each other and in both faiths and so you can find different ways to kind of blend them together and i think that's that's kind of what happened with catholicism and then we do have the shift to from catholicism to other you know religions that we definitely know throughout you know new orleans and throughout the world and that all comes back from the the african roots of um you know at the animistic beliefs so we have like of course the voodoo and then we have uh condombre and we have sangria and all these different areas um that still pay homage to a lot of the african um faith incredible thank you thank you for that uh both of you thank you so much a quick rapid round of questions we're going to close out here uh with our panelists and i just want to do rapid fire going from each one of you to just say to us your final thoughts on the documentary uh we i know we're anticipating by this time next week we'll be watching it almost in a week and a day from now so final thoughts uh dr vincent those scholars that they have on the program those talking heads as i call them experts uh all of them have outstanding books i'm thinking about uh evelyn brooks hickenbotham's book on righteous discontent west book on race matters skip gates has a number of books so i'd encourage our audience to be sure to obtain some of these books uh some of their writings online and just share this with their loved ones with their families with their communities and with those that they have influence with so i'm looking forward to this and certainly when these many of these schools were started this is the last point i want to mention some of them such as uh the religious program started at howard by benny mays uh he wanted to train along with how thermal and discussed in this he they wanted to train a series of ministers similar to what the law school was doing on a charles hamilton houston was training pastors and leaders to go out and help change the dynamics of how we viewed our religion how the religion could be used in many aspects of our lives and certainly when he went to morehouse benny mays was there dr king was there they had some of the same philosophies so continue to read and watch the documentary listen to these experts and read some of their books yes the voice of a history professor ms davis your final thoughts um i'm looking forward to seeing the full four hours um not just for the musical aspects of course but um just for the historical part of the black church and um finding out things that i didn't know um just even in the 25 minutes it opened my eyes uh to some things about the black church that i just probably took for granted um even and we brought this out in our discussion last week about the finances being um or the finances for the civil rights movement being funded by the by the freedom singers it's we knew that but we take for granted how much music plays a part in finances even in the church and there's some other things we're looking at the political side is very interesting especially in the day that we're living in right now um it just shows goes to show me um as well as hopefully the other people that are listening and watching how far we've come we still have a long ways to go and i think this um documentary is going to open our eyes and help us move forward to reaching where we need to um reaching that final part in our lives rather thank you miss davis and yes uh dr gates did say that he said you know this is one of the most important ones that he's that he thinks he's done so i think it is going to have that kind of impact uh on our community reverend brisbane your final thoughts yes um one of the things that i love seeing just in the snip is just seeing how you have a dual mentorship that's taking place in order to propel um us into act being activists and the whole nine and and so i just pray that we will continue to embrace and embody that as we're moving forward because we need to do a mentorship um and hearing what is being said and how do we live it out as we move forward because again if you didn't have um the seasoned along with the the zeal we could not have a movement and so how do we continue um to create a movement that will continue to sustain and provide a legacy um beyond today absolutely we've still got to deal with that intersection of race religion and politics um because that's what's at the forefront of what we are dealing with today so that that is important thank you reverend brisbane and uh finally dr senegal to queer yeah i i think that this is an extremely important documentary um i think it's the right time to have this documentary it's about time that we've had this documentary to uh commemorate the legacy the heritage of of the african-american churches and again i like i said it's the right time it's the right time because we we need to show our young people um the struggle that we faced before they need to understand that struggle they need to understand that they could lean on the black church because they're going to need that support to continue the fight in the black lives matter movement so i think this is the right time for it definitely and going back to something that miss davis said that you know so much we take for granted and i think uh absent knowing the history of the black church you will take the church and its uh and its progress or just wherever it stands in your life you may take it for granted not recognizing the struggle that got us to this place of freedom uh and even in this country uh as it relates to freedom of religion it's something that uh we we've taken for perhaps taken for granted and we certainly enjoy uh the benefits of that so thank you uh dr vincent miss davis reverend brisbane and dr senegal to queer thank you all for the time that you shared with us this evening this has been such an important and meaningful topic for us and i wish we had more time to converse on it uh we don't uh so we but but on that same note i want to let you know that lpb is doing an even deeper dive into the topic on their weekly statewide news program louisiana the state we're in it airs on fridays uh every friday and on fridays in february at 7 00 pm we'll get a chance to see karen saint cyr talk about this deeper dive that she's taking and karen is carol rather karen i gave you a new name uh cara is joining us this evening to talk a bit about about the series caro yeah so like you said uh we're going to be putting together our own documentary focusing on black churches but of course ours is going to have a little bit more of a louisiana twist because a lot of the things that are mentioned in the pbs documentary are things that have happened here you know our churches have been involved in civil rights movements our churches have been involved in breaking racial barriers and influencing pop culture so we're definitely going to be focusing on those aspects and another thing that we're also going to be bringing to the forefront is catholicism because for louisiana that is a huge part of our culture because like dr charlene said earlier she mentioned that this state was colonized by the french and spanish and that influence still sticks with us today so um we're going to be taking a deeper dive into all of those topics and really bringing it home about how this state and our churches have influenced not only you know the black community but also just american history because black history is american history so um like you said we're going to be having different episodes that are going to be airing each friday in february and then in march we're going to be having one big documentary that's just going to cover every one of those topics in detail so hope you guys are able to tune in thank you kara and welcome to the lpb family so we look forward to watching your series on louisiana the state we're in and for those of you who are watching online tonight watch your email for a survey about tonight's event we want you to complete the survey the online survey that is and you'll be entered into a drawing and you could win a free lpb passport membership that's your access to all the programs on lpb at any time you'd like and that membership is uh is a great thing to have sort of like lpb on demand you can pull up any program you like at any time so once again lpb would like to extend our thanks to our partners who helped make this evening possible louisiana's hbcu advisory council that southern university dylan university xavier university and grambling state university we thank you for that and our local support is being provided by state farm exxon mobil of baton rouge blue cross and blue shield of louisiana and csrs and we want to thank you for joining us and for more on louisiana's black church you can go to lpb.org the black church and remember to tune in to your local lpb station on february 16th and 17th to watch the series the black church this is our story this is our song i'm robin merrick wishing you all a very good night thank you