 Hi, my name is Henry Louis Gates Jr., and it gives me an enormous amount of pleasure to welcome you to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund's digital series on Cultural Preservation. Black churches have been at the forefront of meaningful democratic reform at least since this nation's founding, and they're a living testament to the heroic resilience of our ancestors in the face of unimaginably daunting challenges. Please join me as we discuss the legacy work of stewarding historic black churches and explore how their long-term financial stability can enable them to continue to serve their communities for generations to come. It gives me an enormous amount of pleasure to introduce and host this panel on the important role that institutions and stewardship play in our national life, and in particular how black churches historically have been the bedrock of the African American experience from the time of the American Revolution to today. Now, let me begin by congratulating the National Trust's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund on its six years of national leadership and the impact that it has made, the dramatic impact that it has made as we all know in this room in so many communities across the country. Give it up to Brent Legs. This mission is so very important at this moment in our history, and give it up to Darren Walker, the person who brought us together, the person who funds the important work that we do. And let us also applaud the Lillian Dalmat for investing $20 million, ladies and gentlemen. That's 20 million bucks in the Action Fund's preserving black churches project. And over time, this partnership bears every promise of transforming the way our nation protects historic black churches. So it's wonderful to have Chris Cobble and the Reverend Brian Williams of the Lillian Dalmat here with us this afternoon. So let's give it up for the vital work that they are doing to support this mission. Please. Now, let me introduce our outstanding group of panelists, Bishop Anne Byfield, serves as the 135th elected and consecrated Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, representing the 16th Episcopal District. She represents the historic St. James AME Church in Mayfield, Kentucky. Give it up for the bishop. Ted Debrow. Ted Debrow is a preservation leader and chair of the Board of Trustees at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which needs no introduction, where he oversees restoration, planning, and fundraising. Give it up for Ted, please. Got a little fan club out here, Ted. Where were you AME people when I introduced the bishop? Bunch of Baptists in here, Bishop, I don't know. Like Evelyn Brooks Higginbottom. Dr. Noelle Trent is the new CEO of the Museum of African American History and our beloved Boston and Nantucket, where they steward two of the oldest extant African meeting houses in the United States. And she was former executive of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Give it up for Dr. Trent, please. And last but not least, Valerie McDonald is a journalist, the member of the Second Baptist Church, Los Angeles, where she serves on the Deaconate Board and is chair of Christian Women on the Move. Please give it up for Valerie McDonald. As a way of framing our conversation, I'd like to speak for just a few minutes. I am not a black preacher. I won't be taking a long time. I'd like to speak for just a few minutes on the historical importance of black churches and why preserving them for future generations is very important. Could we roll the videotape? This is our story. The black church was more than just a spiritual home. It was the epic center of black life. Out of it came our black businesses, our black educational institutions. The black church gave people a sense of value, belonging, and worthiness. I don't know how we could have survived as a people without it. To tell the story of American religion is to tell a political story. The black church helped us to withstand all the slings and arrows of segregation and the segregationists. We're willing to be beaten for democracy. Who are the five great black preachers of all time. There's so many. Prathia Hall. Renata Williams. We serve a Jesus who came and turned over the tables. Jeremiah Wright. Gardner Taylor. Gardner Taylor. Howard Thurman. I left out oldest Maas presiding Bishop Michael Curry. Love can be set for special. Did you think that you were going to get one amen out of those Brits? I learned how to see amens in their eyes. I'm going to clap my hands, I'm going to sing to the Lord. Some might argue that the black church is the first black theater. The role of music in the black church is everything. How do you define gospel music? Oh, really, simple gospel music. It's the sonic presentation that talks about the majesty of Jesus. Entertainment shouldn't be in the church. What do you think the preacher does? I don't know if you can't do it. The preacher, hand your high, hand your high. That's entertainment. The African-American church is 80% to 90% women, but the leadership is 80% to 90% male. There's an awful price to pay when you say that you're a same-gender loving person. If you say you were born this way, then you're saying God. We are a testament to the goodness and the grace of God. Everything in the world has tried to kill us and we're still here. Culture says you the wrong race, your race. And I ain't made no mistake. It was our bomb in Gilead, the place where our people made a way out of nowhere. It was that place from which our souls could look back and wonder how we got over. We call it the church. But the church say amen. The black church was, is and shall always be the heart of our community and for our people. The black church has served as houses of worship, from hushed harbors to praise houses, from brick and mortar churches to mega churches. Dot our inner cities and our Zoom screens, right? And our suburbs. Places of community support. Ground zero for political organizing and social justice. Sanctuaries for the suffering and the marginalized. And engines for transcendent cultural gifts exported to the whole wide world. From the soulful voices of preachers and congregants to the sublime sounds of gospel music. The black church also was the first institution built by black people and run independently of white society. And its roots are interwoven with the birth of the United States at the end of the 18th century just a few examples. First African Baptist Savannah, dating from 1773, officially constituted in 1788. Silver Bluffs Baptist in Aiken County, South Carolina, dating from the early to mid 1770s, officially constituted later in the 1780s. Springfield Baptist in Augusta, 1787, claims lineage from Silver Bluff. First Baptist, Petersburg, Virginia, 1774, but under white supervision and reality, not an independent church until a few decades later. First African Baptist, Williamsburg, Virginia, possibly the first constitution constituted independently by and for African-Americans, officially constituted in the year the United States was born in 1776. The black church is not and never has been a monolith, as each of us knows so well in this room, which is why preserving the diversity of these local institutions across the country is so vitally important. I had the honor and joy of exploring this history across four hours for my recent series on the black church for PBS. And as I said, it's ecstatic that we'll be returning in February to this rich subject matter with another four-hour series on the history of black preaching and gospel music. And so stay tuned for that. Now, through these projects, I've gained a much deeper appreciation of how generations of black people have said the sacred name of God, starting with the ways that our enslaved African ancestors miraculously, and indeed, I think it's one of the great miracles in the modern world, how our ancestors miraculously, modernity starting in 1492, as historians stated, managed to bring their faith traditions from Africa to the New World, translating them into the following, a form of Christianity that was truly their own, with a liberating God always at its center, and a redemptive force for a nation whose original sin was founded in their ancestors' enslavement, captured in Africa, survival across the dreaded middle passage, and then institutionalized over generations in the peculiar institution of slavery on this side of the Atlantic. It's our responsibility, ladies and gentlemen, as the inheritors of this tradition to put its preservation front and center. And it is with this top of mind that we begin our conversation with brief two-minute statements from each of our panelists. And I'll call on them in a minute as I walk over. But please, give it up to our panelists, ladies and gentlemen. All right, Bishop Byfield. Byfield, thank you. The African Methodist Episcopal Church started in 1787 as a protest of injustice and became a Church of Liberation and Reconciliation to all persons, particularly in the treatment of blacks in the society. In 1820, the first church hit Kentucky. And St. James Aimee Church Mayfield came out of that. And so in the mid to late 1800s, St. James Mayfield was started. He was started out of the same commitment for liberation and justice. And what makes this so significant is that not only does it have its own history in that community and in society, but two major African-American artists came out or through that church, which is one of the reasons why it is important to preserve it. Helen LeFrance, who was known and has a major mural all through Kentucky, and another one is Ellis Wilson. Ellis Wilson's name is not known as well. But if you ever watched the Bill Cosby show, the painting of the funeral procession is by an artist that came out of St. James Aimee Mayfield. And so I'm here to speak to the preservation of that and how climate has affected the church and other churches around the world. Thank you, Bishop. Look at that. Under two minutes. That's what I'm talking about. Ted DeBrow. All right. And if you are not a good time, keep up. My wife is in the audience, and she has been on me for the last week. Amen. I'll stand with her. I want to introduce you to 16th Street Baptist Church. Many of you know 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. But let me tell you that it is my house of worship. And it's a church that I love. So that's the first important key of 16th Street Baptist Church. That it is an active church. And it is my house of worship. The second point I want to make is that 16th Street is known historically. Now, the first thing you think about is a bombing. But no, 16th Street was organized 150 years ago as the first colored Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Two years after Birmingham was developed. So historically, it's an old church that not only developed the community of Birmingham, but developed the entire African-American experience in Birmingham, Alabama. Thirdly, it's important because of its architecture. The current church that you see on the screen was really designed by one of the first African-American architects, Wallace A. Rayfield. Trained at Pratt Institute in Columbia University, recruited by Booker T. Washington to come to Tuskegee Institute to teach architectural science. But left Tuskegee to come to Birmingham to establish its own firm in the early 1900s and was available to design the current structure that we are in. So it's important architecturally, built in 1911. It's important nationally because of the bombing that happened on September 15, 1963, that killed four young girls and really caused the nation to change its direction, change in rules, regulations, so we could be a better people. And finally, it's important for today. Where's your wife sitting? It's important for today because of the number of visitors and people who really come to 16th Street to touch it, to learn it, to hear the stories, and then go out as changed individuals to make changes in this world. Thank you. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Give it up for Ted. Dr. Trent, if you please. Good afternoon, everyone. I am the president of the Museum of African-American History, and we have two churches within our stewardship. The first is the Boston African Meeting House, which is the oldest extant church building in the country. The church itself, the first African first Baptist church of Boston, was actually started in the basement of Fanuel Hall. And in 1806, the building was built. It was built by Black people, not just designed. It was designed by a Black person, built by Black people, fundraised by Black people. And it's an incredibly important history. In that building, you have people like Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison. Anyone who was anyone in the abolitionist movement, if you needed credibility, you came through the Boston African Meeting House. The Massachusetts Colored General Association was started there. And another organization, the New England Antislavery Society, was started there by William Lloyd Garrison. So we have this tremendous history. The museum itself is founded by Sue Bailey Thurman, who during the Civil Rights Movement is documenting Black presence in Boston. Because a whole lot of people ask the question, are there Black people in Boston? Yes, there are. The next question is, are there Black people in Nantucket? Yes, there are. The Nantucket African Meeting House was formed and inspired by the Boston African Meeting House, and it was consecrated in 1825. We have a long history. It came into our stewardship in the early 2000s. Unfortunately, in 2018, a local neighbor decided to express their hatred on the walls of our building with a pejorative spray-painted there. Thank you to the Action Fund. We were able to work with law enforcement. We were able to address it. But that is one of those things that lingers. So we are not without being affected by the national climate. And I believe, Brent, that was one of the first big crises that you had to deal with. And thank you for all of your support. So that is who we are, and I'll get into a little bit more of that later on in the panel. Great, thank you. Thank you very much. Give it up, please. And finally, Valerie McDonald. Thank you. Good afternoon. I am here to introduce you to Second Baptist Church, Los Angeles, formed in 1885 by a group of men and women in the upper room. From its inception, we were encouraged to vote. People were born slaves, and now they are encouraged to vote in Los Angeles. In 1921, Thomas Griffith decided that because of the growth of the church, it needed a larger space. He commissioned Paul Williams and Norman Marsh to design a building that would seat 2,500 people. And as they built that, it became the largest African-American Baptist congregation west of the Mississippi, very large. In 1928, the NAACP held their first east or west coast convention. They had these annual conventions. And in 1928, it held its convention as Second Baptist. We have had a wonderful legacy of civil rights movements. Anyone who came to Los Angeles, Second Baptist, was actually the place you came to. We were part of, Paul Robeson came to perform, to raise money there. Mary McLeod Bethune spoke to encourage African-Americans to empower themselves, and particularly women. When we were going through our COVID era here, we noticed that there was some damage to our building. And as that took place, we reached out to the Action Fund. And not only did they respond, but they responded enthusiastically and said, we did not know Second Baptist existed. So I am here to introduce to you a wonderful heritage in the Black History Movement. And as Ted says, it is my home. And I love it dearly. And everything that we can share here today, I will give you a little more history on that. Great. Thanks. Give it up for Valerie, please. Wonderful. OK, we're going to start with one question for each of you. And then I'll ask specific questions of you. First, as the caretakers of historic Black Church buildings and the history enclosed there, what are the greatest challenges, do you think, confronting Black Church preservation? And how are you mitigating these real preservation threats to save and protect your churches and legacies? Why don't we just start here and go straight down? OK, I would say that the biggest challenge has really been finances and resources. When you are talking about a church that was a premier church in a city and then with red lining, with highways coming through and really destroying the community, it also destroyed memberships in the church. And so our membership now is probably down to about 300 members. And even though people think of the great 16th Street Baptist Church and probably with thousands of members and all, we have about 300 active members. And really it takes every penny that they can contribute to the ongoing operations of the church. So when you're talking about preservation and the expenses in preservation, we really didn't have those resources. But fortunately, we have been working on this whole preservation scheme for really about 30 years. And I want people to understand that it doesn't happen overnight. It's a long period of time. And so we've been working really about 30 years when the civil rights institute opened across the street from 16th Street Baptist Church. We were told that we needed to get ready for the number of visitors that would come. So we had sort of a cosmetic renovation of the church, which was all wrong. And Jack Plyburn, who's in the audience, really came to us and really gave us a historic structures report that we use for the next 20 years to really preserve our church as it should have been from the beginning. So you gave it a bad facelift. We gave it a bad facelift. We had to go back and redo things. And now we have preserved it with the National Park Service grants, with the grants from the National Trust, from the Main Street Program, from the Black Church Fund, from anywhere we could get the resources that had to be outside of the 300 members in order to preserve the church. We have raised in the last three or four years about $6 million to really restore not only the church, but the possum. That's good. Is that what you need? Yes. So you've raised all the money you need? No, we have not. I'm going to talk about the future. That was an IQ test. I was going to talk about the future. And that's going to come a little bit later. But we have preserved the church, and we are now moving toward trying to raise an endowment to take care of the church for years to come. Endowment is everything. It is. And the National Trust has given us a challenge of $200,000. If we can raise the matching funds, we are really going above over that $200,000 to try to raise a million to invest for the maintenance of the church that we have restored. Valerie? Well, we are baby steps as far as preservation is concerned. This is something that is new to us. And we have just formed a committee for the preservation of Second Baptist Church. It is a small committee of folks who are looking at the resources in the city, in our government, of course, and in our congregation. Now, our congregation is about 80% 90 to 100 years old. So they are retired individuals. And wait a minute. Say that again. 80% are 90 to 100 years old? 80 to 100 years old. It must be something in the water or air. I can retire there. That's pretty good. We have a lot of wheelchairs. We do have a lot of wheelchairs. But there are also wonderful 100-year-old individuals who are walking just perfectly. And they are clear thinkers. And they are actually working on the preservation committee as well. So it is a testament to the character and strength that Second Baptist has. Like I said, it is a beloved church throughout Los Angeles. It has been there for 138 years. We're not going anywhere. We had the opportunity to leave that community when the demographics changed. But we decided that this is a Paul Williams structure. We wanted to maintain it as a spiritual place, which is why it was founded to begin with. So we are there for the duration. And that is our committee's job to find the funding. And with the rest of the congregation, I think we raised a little over 200,000 the first time. So we are just embarking. This is our first venture into preservation. And it's been a wonderful education for me to be here to see how it all integral with each other. So thank you very much. And I'm sure that you all know who Paul Williams was. But because of the intervention of Frank Sinatra, among other people, he was the first black architect to be hired to build homes in Beverly Hills in Hollywood, built Sammy David Jr.'s house, Frank's house, et cetera. But I didn't know he did churches. I just want to tell you, too, if you fly into Los Angeles, the thing that they call it is still standing. That's a Paul Williams structure. Oh, really? Yes. Oh, wow. So when you fly into Los Angeles and you see something that looks like it's out of Star Wars, that's the building that he put together. Well, that's great. He was tripping that day. Yeah, I got it. Ha ha ha ha ha. Bishop, Bishop Byfield. The action fund, I knew of it. I had heard of it. I don't know that I had any relationship with it. So when St. James AME Church Mayfield was hit by the tornado, my friends called me because for five years I had been in the Caribbean. And there I had to deal with churches through hurricanes, mudslides, and floods. Annually. Annually. And so three months after being assigned to Kentucky, I was hit with floods and tornadoes. And St. James was the worst of the worst. And it was the action fund who reached out to me about how they could partner. And so I'm grateful. I mean, I'm absolutely grateful. And this day has been overwhelming for me to see the breadth and width of what is being done. So there are several reasons I think we need to talk about stewardship. Most, not I won't be that general, but a lot of black churches are underfunded, undercared for, and underinsured. And when they were first built, they had no idea that our tornado was going to hit them. And so they structurally, we have problems. Secondly, many of them are in transition, particularly in rural areas, so that St. James Mayfield has less than 50 members. Most of them are 60, 70, and 80, but who have given their lives to that church. So what the action fund and what we had to do with them was that, one, they had no insurance. They had $150,000 of insurance. That's it. And we had to fight to get that out of their hands because they were afraid, if they gave us the insurance, that they wouldn't have anything. So thank God for the action fund because they gave us $100,000 plus $150 to start the work. The second thing is that there is no plan in the black church for a crisis. And so all through the South, in the AME Church, particularly Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, tornadoes are whipping us. And there is no plan. There's no insurance. The builders can't handle it. And so then when calamity hits, the church has no ability to rebound. The last is people are in grief and depression. So when it happens, they are unable to function very well because they're in such crisis. So I would see those things that we can talk about insurance. We can talk about caring for the building consistently and to do what needs to be done that will help a whole lot to get us to stewardship. Right. And that occurred to me in a way that churches are in a continuous state of PTSD. They are. Especially with this whole new climate, with this whole issue of just white. We have conferences. When I say conferences, like a geographical area, that have wiped out 25 churches when a tornado hit, when Florida hit, how do you, as a denomination, how do you, that as a church, how do you, as a community, have to try and rebuild all of that? Right. Great. Dr. Trent. To build on what the other panelists said, we heard finance. We heard climate change. The other thing is community. And a lot of the way that community has been talked about here is that the community that looks like our institutions, right? But my buildings are in Beacon Hill and Nantucket. Now, at one point. Well-known centers of black culture. Well, in the 19th century, yes. Northside of Beacon Hill was like Harlem in Boston. It was. Joy Street. Joy Street was a happening place to be. Same thing in our neighborhood of New Guinea in Nantucket. That was a happening place to be. In the 18th, 19th century, right? So the neighborhood has changed. And so there's a dynamic there to negotiate your continued existence in a neighborhood that has changed around you, especially when the property values and the wealth of the people around you have changed. Because people's expectations of you have changed. I am the daughter of a pastor. So I've been around churches for a very, very long time. And one of the things that I have seen as I've talked to my dad and other ministers is that people forget the church has to function like a business, right? So Ted and I were talking over lunch. People want to come in and tour a 16th Street Baptist church. But how dare they ask for an admission? Well, somebody's got to keep the lights on, right? You got to keep the heat. That HVAC that's helping you out in an Alabama summer is not free. Jesus paid it all, but he didn't pay our electricity bill. You know? And so there's a fundamental, mental shift that we have to think about. People think of the church as this wonderful entity. We rely on it. We depend on it. But they forget that we have to fund it. And it can't just be reliant upon the 300 members, because the nature of worship, the nature of Christianity and religion in this country has changed. And I'm not criticizing that, but we can no longer rely on our membership to guide us through, right? So all churches, especially historic churches are gonna have to change their fiscal structure to preserve, to exist. But then that's gonna come out into the community and people are gonna say, well, you know, the church won't let us do this. The church won't let us do that. Well, you know why we can't let you do that? Because you've exploited us in the past. We're not getting any money for it. If someone were to use a celebrity's image, right, there's a licensing fee for that, right? There's no, nobody thinks about paying churches a licensing fee, right? We should have rights to our image, right? We should force people to pay that. And sometimes we don't demand that because that's the nice churchy thing to do. Well, also the nice churchy thing to do is to be open and functioning as a community cultural and religious entity. No, you're right. You know, the first time I dealt in the black church, please give it up. I was interviewing Bishop Jones, Noel Jones, you all know Noel Jones, who's a great preacher. You know, it's a great show, long and tall, and he accentuates it with his robe. So I asked him this, you know, typical stupid academic, theoretical, theological question. And he said, brother Gates, all I'm sorry about is keeping more bodies coming in the door on Sunday morning than going out the back door on Saturday night. This is a business. It is a business. And Richard Allen understood that, Absalom Jones understood that, and we all have to understand that. Bishop Byfield, the connection between climate change, you alluded to, I want you to elaborate more on that because I want people to think about it. The connection between climate change and preservation is real, palpable, as you know, all too well. St. Jane's AME was devastated by massive tornado on the night of December 10th, 2021, when a supercell storm that produced the longest tracked tornado system in history tore through the city of Mayfield, Kentucky. The tornado impacted four states that caused the loss of 89 lives. Many good intentioned folks that offered to help demolish the structure and clean up the site. Rather, the church decided to partner with preservationists to rescue this century old heritage that includes Helen LeFrance mural. Tell us about your thoughts on climate change and heritage going forward, and share with us, if you would, what the future holds for the renewal of this deeply sacred space. Absolutely. As I said, I was three months as a Bishop, but I knew St. James Mayfield. My father, Pastor St. James Mayfield, before I was born. So I had grown up hearing the legacy of St. James, the small church that had this community spirit and produced national leaders. And so the structure is wonderful architecturally designed, but when the tornado came, it actually took one side of the church, demolished one side, and then some other damage, stained glass windows, all of that. They cried that day and said, please don't destroy our church. Please don't tear it down. And so we then had to enter to a different kind of perspective because all of the other churches in St. James Mayfield, particularly the black churches, they just knocked everything down, boom, and started over. And most of them have been rebuilt. So now the members of the cry is in, our church is rebuilt. Well, because we are preserving it. So the first thing that we had to do was to make sure that climate, that we could protect it from future climate. Secondly, we had to look at, with how do you preserve a mural in the back of the church? And thank God it was not touched. So part of the problem is working with, and we have Nikita. So everybody said, give it up for Nikita. She's good, man. So we have to come up with a plan which we are working through how to rebuild the church and save and add to it. The problem with some of that is, again, impatience. The people are saying, oh, no, the churches are built. Yes, but you're preserving. We're at seven. The second problem is the time that it takes to do that versus starting over. And how do you keep the people encouraged? So they're worshiping at another church, a Nazarene church, and Nikita, we can't we go back? Well, you can't go back because it's not safe. When you get safe, we can go back. So going into the future, it is my hope that, well, one of the things I've done as a bishop is instituted all over Kentucky and Tennessee, a preservation plan, a history. We didn't have artifacts. We didn't have history. So when Action Fund said, we need this, this, we didn't have it. They didn't have a written history. They didn't have pictures. We had to go all the way to Maryland to somebody who had moved to Maryland who could present it. So one of the things is going forward, every church must have artifacts. They must retain them. They must keep them. They must write real histories of the church and they must have a plan of what will happen. So I hope that we're looking at next year that the church would be built. We're praying that it'll be built. We think it's gonna be built. We just... Yeah. We need some more money. We need about another $500,000. But, and the Army Church has already invested about 300, 400,000 in it. So going forward, those things. And then secondly, lastly, I think is that we need to look at real involvement that climate isn't going away. Pornados are not going away. Hurricanes are not going away. Floods are not going away. And that we need to sit down as a church, as a community, as the fund, as professionals, how we're going to operate in the future with the reality that is going to happen. Right, and realism is the key word in your sentence too. And tough decisions are gonna have to be made. Valerie, second Baptist, rich story. Rich in architecture, civil rights community programs designed by our hero, Paul. And legends like Dr. King spoke there. The church anchored, as you said, a once thriving black middle class, upper middle class. Today, the neighborhood has changed. So why didn't the church cash out? Sell this cultural monument to a developer and move to the suburbs, just put pictures up all around. What motivates the church? What motivates the church to remain in place and work to restore this monumental piece of civic and religious architecture? And what issues are you facing now to preserve the building? The answer to that last question that each one has is money. Money, but I have to ask it, so go ahead. Well, the main purpose was, as I said before, it is a Paul Williams structure, and it was built for the church. When Griffith commissioned Paul Williams that period of time, everything was done by black people, for black people, black construction workers, plumbers, electricians, everyone was black that built that church. And so it is, as I said, people who come to second who have, there are five, six generations in that church. We love that church, and we like it where it is. So we can always preach to the people in the community, regardless of who you are, we can preach that. And so we have stayed there, even though, like I said, during the 20s through the 60s, it was a thriving community. You have the Dunbar Hotel down the street, the Lincoln Theater. It was a place where Martin Luther King, it was called his West Coast home because he preached there so often. Thomas Kilgore was a minister, was a pastor there for 21 years. And during that time, whenever Martin King needed something, he would call Pastor Kilgore because Pastor Kilgore was a voracious fundraiser, and he would raise money for any type of civil rights, event, movement, whatever you needed, he was there for that. So we decided to stay there, and we're not going anywhere. But I have to piggyback on what the Bishop said here, because if I need to talk to you about tornadoes, because there was one that hit Los Angeles for the first time in, I don't know how many years. So we are dealing with the structure right now that the engineers are going through to take a look at the integrity of the building. As I said, a hundred years old, nothing has been done on this church in that 100 years outside of just slight maintenance here and there. We had to put elevators in for compliance in the city. But the building, the structure itself needs a lot of work, and that is what we're dealing with, and with the weather change and climate change happening, we're gonna have to look at the roofing, the tower bells and things like that. But we are in it for the long run. I'd like to see second 300 years, 400 years from now. I hope so. Ted, 16th Street received $200,000 Endowment and Financial Sustainability Grant from the Action Fund. Let's talk about endowment. Why an endowment features critical to sustain the physical preservation of this historic asset and how much the church plans raise and how are you gonna go about it? We are starting a capital campaign really in the next couple of weeks, really to establish this endowment. Well, I would say we established the endowment probably about 10 years ago with $250,000 that we raised, and it is in a fund, and we only use the interest for the maintenance of the building. With that idea, when the church fund opened up its endowment program, we saw this as an opportunity to really build on that endowment by increasing it by $1 million to really use that interest to maybe replace an air conditioner, to replace the carpeting, to keep the building in tip-top shape as we are using it more and more with visitors, with programs, with people coming in and out of the facility just to touch the facility. So there has to be a plan, and there is a plan really now to secure the maintenance of the building. We have restored it. We have put protective windows and glass all around for weather that will come in, but in order to maintain it, we have to have a fund that we can rely on because we can't rely on it without current membership. So with this grant of $200,000, it's a challenge for us to match it with another $200,000, and the church is going over and beyond that to say that we will raise a million dollars to secure the maintenance of the church over the years. Great. Dr. Trent, unlike everyone else here whose projects are active churches, you run a museum. It's a public museum receiving visitors, tell them multiplicity of stories associated with freedom fighters and abolitionists, as you said, William Lloyd Garrison, Fred, and free black communities located around Joy Street. And some churches are repurposed as cultural spaces, as educational centers, restaurants, and more. How does the museum reuse the African meeting houses to foster community belonging and creative expression, particularly with changing demographic, with white kids moving back and taking over the cities again? Are you, is your task to preserve African American history, or is it to bring African American history to a more demographically diverse neighborhood and bring that diverse neighborhood into the museum? It is both and. And I've only been with the museum since June, so still in kind of the getting to know you, getting to understand the organization. But one of the reasons I was brought in was the museum at one point, particularly the Boston African Meeting House, was on the endangered site list, the National Trust. And because of the support of the trust, we were able to raise funds and actually save and restore the building. And so we're incredibly grateful for this moment, but what that allows us to do is now be more thoughtful and imaginative. And prior to my arrival, the board worked with the Mellon Foundation, who gave us a very gracious grant of a million dollars to allow us to get the structural support in terms of staffing to help us be imaginative. And so in this moment, what we're looking towards doing is, yes, there's tours of the building and the National Park Service by Heritage Trail Tour ends at the Boston site. But one of the things I'm really interested in doing is to reimagine the experience. Boston is a place very dense with historic sites. When you walk a couple blocks over, you run into another one, right? So what's different about us to make it experiential? I think artists are incredibly important and they'll be entwined in our future. I've had experience where you show an artist an object or a document, and all of a sudden, they create something you could have never imagined, right? And your wildest ideas, you couldn't imagine them being inspired and creating something that speaks to all of your themes and ideas in a meaningful way. And so that's the other thing that we're looking to do. The third thing is I'm very invested in reviving the original purpose of the meeting houses. And what I mean by that is that there's a presence to include the liturgical, so bringing ministers in, concerts. But there's also a presence, particularly with the Boston location, that it was always a place for social justice. And if you look at where we are, I think about not so much the leaders, and I love Frederick Douglass, but I'm not so much thinking about what Douglass came and said at the meeting house. I'm interested in the everyday people who were inspired to action, right? And so our challenge is our mission states that we are dedicated to 18th and 19th century black history, and a lot of people don't understand how does that relate today? We can have conversations about issues today and figure out how to create a tangible bridge to the past, almost functioning like a portal. And that's what we're aiming to do. And so I think that churches who have to reimagine themselves differently, who function as museums, yes, you operate at the highest standards of the museum field, but it also provides you a platform to create sustainable connections to the past, to the culture of the black church. And so we've had a few concerts at the museum and I'd get up and do remarks and one journalist blessed their heart that's a Southern expression I picked up in Tennessee said, well, Dr. Trent got up there and she reinvigorated the crowd. And I said, bless your heart, you completely missed what I did. I stood in a pulpit where Frederick Douglass, the Reverend Paul stood. And I let people know in this space, this is a sacred space and at this moment with this gospel concert, we are stepping into as Vincent Harding said, the rivers of the past. We are stepping into a deeply tradition, a deep tradition of religious music. So we are here and I want you, while you're here in this space and another space, you may be at Carnegie Hall, they may not allow you to shout and clap during the song. That's what you can do that here, right? So it was about contextualizing the moment and the culture of who we were historically and who the black church is now. And that's what we're about doing. So I think we can do all of these things very strategically and be open to our black community, but also people who are just interested in black history. And my hope is that even people who are like, I'm not interested in black history, but I am interested in a different experience at a historic site will ultimately come to the museum. All right, makes sense. Let me give you some examples that we have had at 16th Street with our restored space. We had a violin of hope concert. These were violins that had been saved from the Holocaust and rebuilt and restored. So the Jewish community came into our sacred space to hear these violins of hope where they had been restored, the church had been restored. It brought two communities together. And that's one example. Another example is we brought in a play, Memorial. You have all know about the Hanging Museum down in Montgomery. We developed a play around the hangings in Jefferson County and what had happened in Jefferson County and presented that play in 16th Street Baptist Church in the sanctuary that brought in the whole community telling the story in a much different way. We also had another play following that with telling about Judge UW Clemens, the first federal black judge there in Alabama and how his struggle led to finally being a federal judge. We had that play there in the sanctuary of the church. But now that the space has been renovated and restored and preserved, we open up to the community and it's to all of the community. We are not really seen as a black church now. We are seen as everybody's church and everybody's coming. We just had a federal Supreme Court Justice, Jackson Brown as our speaker on the 15th, filled to capacity, overflow into the park, into the museum and people will still land up. And there were all races, all sexes, all everybody trying to get into 16th Street. That's how the preserved space is now making a difference. That's great. That's great. Very clever. We have a minute and 25 seconds left. So these other 15 questions I'm not gonna be able to ask. But let me ask the last one. If you could wave a magic wand and access transformational resources, Bishop, what does the future look like at your heritage site? I want each of you to do a quick response. Sorry, I'm with the Bishop. A new building, a new people, and a restored community as a result of the preservation. Okay. Doctor? I see an unprecedented experience where you can step into the 18th and 19th century and understand the black community in a new way and walk out inspired. Well, I love that. Valerie? I see sort of the same thing. In fact, with living history, with some of our 90 and 100 year olds, and a sacred place restored to continue the community outreach, the social justice, and the spiritual. Finally. And I'm gonna push this out another way. Because I think you probably have heard my dreams of the church, but because I'm talking to funders and preservationists and architects and all, I really wanna see some courses in preservation of black churches, in particular, going into seminaries and into our colleges. Because the ministers are not receiving the training of how to hold on to our treasures. And so one of the important courses that we really need in our seminaries now would be a course on how to preserve a church. Because they're gonna inherit these old churches. And to get started, they got to know how to rebuild those churches and the congregation. Right, no, that's great. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope this conversation has given us all the greater sense of mission and purpose as we get back to work on preserving our history for future generations to touch, to see, and be inspired by and mind, body, and soul. Let's give it up for our great panelists. Thank you. Hello, I'm Felicia Brashad. And I serve as co-chair for the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. Thank you for joining us for this year-long digital series, which highlights the cultural preservation movement that's happening all over our nation in the name of saving historic African American spaces. We're glad you're here. And we hope you're encouraged to support the preservation of historic African American buildings and spaces.