The Bible is Black History | American Black Journal Full Episode

just ahead on american black journal the charles h wright museum of african american history celebrates black history month we'll take a look at the museum's special programming in february plus a new book offers proof of black people's existence in biblical history that's all coming up right now on american black journal masco corporation is proud to manufacture innovative and environmentally friendly products for the home delta faucets craft made in maryland cabinets and bear brand paints have all been designed with you in mind masco and its family of companies serving michigan communities since 1929. how does diversity bring energy to us all at dte energy we believe that it's the contributions of all that build great communities as a company we grow stronger by welcoming the unique perspectives of everyone as community members we support our state's broad culture and heritage from working closely with women and minority-owned suppliers to embracing our local cultures dte energy is powering diversity the dte energy foundation is a proud sponsor of detroit public television for nearly 100 years ally has been a part of detroit and we give back by volunteering and donating in our community we have a commitment to diversity and increasing economic mobility in our hometown at ally we're dedicated to doing it right every single day [Music] do [Music] welcome to american black journal i'm stephen henderson it is black history month and the calendar of events at the charles h wright museum of african american history is of course filled with exciting and unique programs from book signings to films and hip-hop music the museum is the place to be this month joining me now is charles farrell the museum's vice president of public programs along with author and playwright bill harris who will give a talk on his book i gotta keep moving and piper carter founder of the annual dilla youth day event at the wright museum thanks for all of you for being here and thank you thank you thank you uh let's start with you charles uh this you said before we started taping uh something i think is absolutely true that the museum is the center of the universe in detroit during black history month every year you prove that well absolutely in fact stephen this year we have 17 programs throughout february to highlight the humanity and the contributions of african americans as you know our mission is to open minds and change lives to the celebration and exploration of african american history and culture i think we really are doing a great job in that area under our new ceo neil barclay and of course to be surrounded by eminent scholars and literary artists i think we really want to focus on art and and history and telling the story about the humanity that's our theme this year as well as 1619 to 2019 our struggle for human rights yeah yeah uh we're going to talk with bill and piper and a little bit about the programs that they're involved in but but tell us about some of the other big highlights of the museum's programming this month well sure just for those who missed it just to start off we had the unveiling of gregory hines stamp with the u.s postal service and had a group called tapology to come and do tap dance of course brought gregory hines into rome through a video as always a wonderful program to partner with the u.s postal service for their black heritage stamp we have actually coming up this week with uh dilla day youth day which piper will speak about but we also have a a partnership with new detroit looking at genealogy and racial healing storytelling they've been working on that for a couple of years now yeah absolutely so we are very happy to partner with new detroit on a three-part program through the month of february we also partnered with university musical society out of ann arbor and we have a program focused on black lives matter art and form so an art perspective to the black lives matter movement i want to highlight and leave space for the other panelists but to talk about a key program this month is our decolonizing the mind for the listening audience who may not be familiar with in gucci want the ongo he's considered one of the world's greatest writers he was nominated three times for the nobel peace prize of literature and basically talks about the importance of language as a conveyor of culture he'll be joined by dr gory house who happily received the night 2019 eminent artist award from kresge she's also the site director for our freedom school which is held each week taught by professors to youth in detroit from 10 to 12 30. they'll be involved in the conversation on february 26 then on the 27th we have a workshop actually engaged around the role of the cultural intellectual artists uh with uh the great in gucci wathiongo so we as usual it's just it's just a calendar chock full of events and events that people cannot just go and listen or watch but actually participate oh absolutely absolutely and of course so you know the center of our uh excavation center and still we rise exhibition when uh really uh this year i'm treating people to come out and join us as members this is a year of membership drive for the museum it's very modest at 35 for general membership five dollars for students so we like everybody this museum belongs to our entire community to be a member and to uh participate and have that interactive relationship around our history which is really world history yeah yeah uh bill you're gonna give a talk about uh your book tell us what that's about actually it's a book short stories um i'm going to read at the program and then it will be a brief conversation between um somebody yet to be named and then we'll open it up to uh to the public yeah so tell us about the stories that are in this book it's actually in three parts um the title is i got to keep moving and it's about the migration of black people from the south toward the north the first section is on a fictional plantation in alabama in 1830s really wanted to try and understand slavery how people made it through that trying to get into the minds of these people who have who preceded us uh made the trip for us and explained to us who we are through them yeah so um again first story is africans in 1830 as they speak to what their reality was there are other stories um about uh slave children how the institution affected them uh bring it up to adults there's a one of the men who works on the plantation who reacts to something that has happened to one of the children there how he's trying to find himself trying to define himself within this system second part of the book is uh called pearl and sun it's about a mother from that that area and her blind child and essentially on the road she is trying to find a place for herself and her son in the 1920s 1930s up to the 1940s and the last section is a family uh who have called after they were released from slavery have called themselves the nettles because they always want to be an irritant to these white people who were on the plantation uh it's their story uh it takes it up into the into the 60s one uh the characters particularly who was who found a way to be an irritant to these people because she knows her history and this one of the white people there is trying to write his history and she makes him understand that he can't she he can't write his history unless he understands what he is wow wow that'll be a wonderful uh talk and it fits right into the theme of of course black history month indeed indeed yeah you can't you can't tell a story about america without telling the story about black people yeah dude yeah piper villa day yes again right year we do this every year yes yes i'll tell those viewers who do not know about de la day what it is well it's an extraordinary day dedicated to jay dilla who is from detroit he passed from lupus in 2006 and he was from the kona gardens area under the tutelage of our great amp fiddler he learned how to open up what's called an npc which is a musical an electronic musical instrument and tweak it and create this sound and that is how he created the genre of neo-soul and so with that and the tradition of hip-hop in general with technology being a central uh part of how hip hop was and is created we want to utilize that to inspire young people to enter steam and various arts culture and technological uh interests but hopefully careers yeah and so what we do is we pair we bring in a lot of the people who are professional producers and music artists who actually work with jay dilla and they work with the young people teaching them and we've expanded that into opening up to various youth programs throughout the city that offer arts and culture as well as technology programs everything's hands-on everything is free we have all ages we even have a whole early childhood center which is going to take place inside the inspiring minds exhibit that's for six and under so hands-on steam activities for young folks because we know our young people are very talented and excited to be makers and creators from an early age we also have a teen center we know that our teens need their own space so that they can be more serious and learn from each other and hear from one another so we'll have great workshops happening and there things like um how to get your music played on the radio yeah things they want to know and then we also have um throughout the um throughout the entire museum and the rotunda we have uh djs that will be teaching hands-on djing and also movement because we have to engage our bodies to engage our minds we're dealing with young folks we'll have the b boys there we'll have all types of vendors and it's just a really really wonderful exciting family day that's uh open to the public yeah and that crossover between the tech side and the arts is the thing that i always think is so cool i mean it's wonderful to be into tech and it's where a lot of careers are but uh it does overlap with creativity and yeah and especially in music and being solutionary in it yeah and especially now where we're moving into um less of the traditional types of jobs that deal with intensive physical labor and more being on the world global market where we get a chance to invent solutions to our world's most pressing issues charles we've only got about a minute left uh do you want to highlight one more one more thing you want people well certainly we promote at the charles wright museum literacy reading books critical analysis independent thinking is a foundation for informed activism and i was just reflecting on our panelists conversation around importance of art in gujarationgo when he was in prison for writing in his native language stated that the my experience of survival in maximum security prison is a testimony to the magic of imagination the power of imagination to help humans break free of confinement is truly the story of all art wow so we fully embrace the role of the artists in our society we think we need to lift them up and give them a platform and we have some very exciting programs we asked the listing audience to visit www.thewright.org our events page uh to stay up and certainly come out and participate and you can come out and join us every day this month absolutely yeah as always really great to have you here well it's always a pleasure we appreciate your support stephen thank you guys thank you much thank you just ahead black history in the bible but first we continue our look back at this program over the last 50 years here's a 1991 detroit black journal conversation about the role of the black church in the community you've talked about the fact that the church used to provide some of those nurturing kinds of things can anyone be more specific what historically has the church meant to the black community well for one thing certainly it's been a social reality sometimes there might be an entire community from down south that's moved up south and might find each other near a local neighborhood and who formed a church and even keep the same name of the church so there's some social continuity there you know generations would come one behind the other we now have the mobility whether it's because of integration it's our changing economic status in some cases so that not only do we have white flight out but we even have black flight out following those opportunities draining leadership draining some social balance out of our communities and so you no longer have children growing up in the same neighborhood necessarily coming behind mom and dad in the same church to continue to populate it and so on and when you mix that with the fact that a lot of us now have our buildings based in neighborhoods but we're not necessarily neighborhood churches okay we've got a building in the neighborhood but that's not the same as being a neighborhood church and we've got this mobile society and that's one thing that comes to mind to me but meantime you know we provided a social reality an economic reality uh political reality political reality too absolutely um everything that goes into making a community a cultural reality we were the vessel of transmitting the culture generation to generation a new book is addressing the age-old question about whether people of african descent were present in biblical history the bible is black history explores dna evidence and the work of historians and scientists to prove that black people were part of the israelite community in the bible the book claims the world's first man identified as adam was a black man from africa my next guest is the book's author dr theron williams is a pastor in indianapolis and a detroit native welcome to american black journal thank you steve yeah so this is fascinating research this is something that i've heard people say for a long time right that black people were are part of uh the original human uh tribes including in the bible but but the idea of trying to prove that through dna and records i think gives it an added dimension yeah um yeah the the book advances the notion that the people who made up the israelite communities both in old and new testament were people of color namely black people we know that the world's first man that the father of modern humans was a black man in east africa dna evidence bears that out in fact the national geographic society along with ibm came together and they put together the genographic project it was headed by dr spencer wales and it concluded in 2005 it was a 10-year study and they went worldwide dr spencer wells and his team collecting dna evidence from indigenous communities worldwide and they wanted to find who is the father of modern humans and so we know women have two x chromosomes and men have an x and a y chromosome so they studied the y chromosome and they traced it back 60 000 years to east africa and dr uh wales and his team concluded that the the first modern human was a black man in east africa whom the bible identifies as adam so we know that through dna evidence and then the descendants of adam obviously would have been black people right right uh uh tell me what made you interested uh well in this subject what what made me interested stephen is that in the black church we were having a defection of african-american young people millennials and i was trying to figure out why were they defecting from the church and where are they going and why are they leaving you know it wasn't like my generation i'm a baby boomer you know we we came to church and we didn't ask many questions or anything yeah you just did it because you were supposed to we did it because we were supposed to you know and but this generation of millennials are now asking questions you know um they're questioning the efficacy of the church they're questioning the authenticity of the scripture they're questioning the historicity of jesus and the church has not answered those questions adequately enough and so this was a study it started off as a study particularly for my millennials at our at our church um and it turned into a nine-month study and then that study turned into a book so it was as if the millennial generation pushed me into writing this book yeah uh what lessons other than sort of the obvious connection uh to to modern african and african-american people uh what lesson do you feel we should draw from this evidence this this proof that that black people were among uh the these early tribes of humans well it's it's empowering you know because it contradicts the traditional notion that the people of the bible from adam all the way to jesus were people of european descent and that's just not true that's just not factual and so it's empowering to a community to look in the biblical text and see themselves as a part of salvation history not sitting on the sideline waiting for someone else to win salvation for us yes but that people of african descent were actually the authors of salvation history which draws the african-american reader into the story because part of me is in the story that's empowering yeah and you think about uh the sort of easy logic of of some of this truth i mean if you think about where life begins and sort of what part of the world most of the bible takes place in if you go there even now it's not like you see people of european descent there i mean you see people of african and and middle eastern uh descent and yet as you point out all of the stories for forever really have been told as though uh the the principal characters are all are all uh of european decision sure sure and people raised a question to me you know as i lecture around the country on this on this topic particularly when it comes to the uh racial makeup of jesus christ people ask what differences does it make i mean he died for our sins he's the savior of the world and the answer is that that's the wrong question what difference does this color make that's the wrong question the question is since we know that jesus christ was not a scandinavian because he's depicted as scandinavian he's depicted as a european and the traditional images of jesus and we know that he didn't look like that the question is not what difference does his color make the question is why have he been white wise why have we done that why are we allowed that that's that's the question that we that we should be pursuing yeah uh in the neighborhood where i was born here in in detroit there's a catholic church called saint cecilia which in the 1960s like many catholic churches in the city was starting to change in its population as the city was changing and it was becoming more african-american and the priest there told an artist an african-american artist who was a member of the congregation to paint a mural behind the altar and he said i want you to try to reflect what you think why you feel connected to this religion and to this church uh and this artist painted a 30 35 foot image of black of jesus as a as a black man and the controversy that that ensued uh is legend not just in the neighborhood but but all over the country i mean the washington post came and wrote a story about it but that reaction when someone suggested in the late 1960s hey this is who i see when i think about christ i see an african-american it elicited this very visceral response right people are very protective of these other images and i think that speaks again to the importance of of making sure the truth is understood i think it's one thing to say everyone should be able to see themselves in the church and in christ but then there's also the just the the necessity to have fact rule our our discussion of those sure um it jesus was a human being a historical figure and he bore the indigenous physical characteristics of his community of other people from that area right he is a historical reality and so to negate his color to negate his racial composition is to negate part of who he is because his race the way he looked is a part of his ontological being it's a part of him so you can't separate christ from his ethnicity from his color and say you are accepting christ as your lord and savior you either accept all of them or you don't accept him at all and we don't have the luxury to say that i am going to conform christ into a color that's comfortable for me right right you can't do that yeah you know all right well congratulations on the work and thanks very much for being all right thank god bless you finally today we hope you can join us as we celebrate 50 years of american black journal at a special event on thursday february 21st at the garden theater in midtown detroit i'm going to talk with past hosts and guests of this show plus we'll have performances from local musicians poets and storytellers it all gets underway at 7 00 pm tickets are 10 and can be purchased at americanblackjournal.org hope to see you there that's our program for today thanks for watching check us out online and you can always connect with us on facebook and on twitter we'll see you next time [Music] masco corporation is proud to manufacture innovative and environmentally friendly products for the home delta faucets craft made in marilyn cabinets and bear brand paints have all been designed with you in mind masco and its family of companies serving michigan communities since 1929. how does diversity bring energy to us all at dte energy we believe that it's the contributions of all that build great communities as a company we grow stronger by welcoming the unique perspectives of everyone as community members we support our state's broad culture and heritage from working closely with women and minority owned suppliers to embracing our local cultures dte energy is powering diversity the dte energy foundation is a proud sponsor of detroit public television for nearly 100 years ally has been a part of detroit and we give back by volunteering and donating in our community we have a commitment to diversity and increasing economic mobility in our hometown at ally we're dedicated to doing it right every single day [Music]

Channel: Detroit Public TV

Views: 164,417

Rating: 4.6242604 out of 5

Keywords: detroit public tv, detroit pbs, wtvs, black lives matter, bible, biblical, christianity, jesus, history, black history, christian

Id: EnTXUp0DCIA

Length: 26min 46sec (1606 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 08 2019