From Dr. Henry Louis Gates, The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song, premieres on OETA and the PBS Video app Tuesday, February 16 and 17 at 8 pm. The highly anticipated two-part series promises to be an insightful and honest look at the history of the Black church in America—from its inception to current day.
For many, the Black church is their house of worship. For some, it is ground zero for social justice. For others, it is a place of transcendent cultural gifts exported to the world, from the soulful voices of preachers and congregants to the sublime sounds of gospel music. For the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., going to church in America also was "the most segregated hour" of the week.
The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song explores the changing nature of worship spaces and the men and women who shepherded them from the pulpit, the choir loft, and church pews. The churches are also a world within a world, where Black Americans could be themselves; and the epicenter of freedom struggle that revolutionized the United States across slavery and abolition, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Great Migration, and the civil rights movement.