And you see today I put on my clergy collar because I felt like if I'm the pastor and

I see, you

know, all of you, you know, I want to, you know, I was thinking about what blouse am I going to wear on your clergy blog and be done with it? Oh, good. All right.

All right. So good morning, my name is Sonia Prescott, and today I'm speaking with the Reverend Dr. Delrio Berry. Today is November twenty third, twenty twenty one to start off our conversation today. Rev. Dr. Berry, I was just going to ask about your journey into the ministry. What led you to where you are today with specifically about your experience at Lombard Central and how you ended up there?

Good morning. Sonia, I first would like to say my official name is Del Rio Ligons-Berry, and why do you stick the in there? My father died 20 almost 28 years ago. I was in my married name is Barry, but father died almost 28 years ago. January 26, 1994. I then helped with my husband, and we officially changed my name to Delrio Ligons-Berry so that I could carry on the legacy of my father and his family. I am so blessed of God today to be able to do this whole interview. I am one of six children. Back in the middle on two. Excuse me, hold on. I'm sorry. I'm one of six children born to Carrie Jasper Ligons born in Prospect Virginia, a small town outside of Lynchburg between Lynchburg, Appomattox and Farmville, where a civil war ended. Appomattox is where the Civil War ended in about 1865 or so. Give or take a year and my dad is from there and my mom's from Fredericksburg, Virginia, where a lot of another civil rights civil war battle was fought. Mom from Spotsylvania County in Fredericksburg and dad from Prince Edward County right outside of Appomattox. So my parents. Of Virginians, but they did not meet in Virginia, they met in Philadelphia and were married in nineteen forty three. I'm one of six, as I said, and. I grew up. In the Baptist Church in South Philadelphia, I was a member of. I'm sorry, Union Baptist Church as a child and to my teens before I went to college, and there I was under the pastorate of the Rev. Dr. James E. Kirkland. He was a Ph.D. and an Old Testament Hebrew Bible. So I had a very rich childhood with the Pastor Sunday School. The church attended the church of the famous Marian Anderson, the contralto, the black African-American woman who I was one of the first to sing in the Metropolitan Opera and then all over Europe, all over the classical world. I'm sorry to say I've never met her. She may have come home to visit her mother live right across the street from the church. On South Marten Street, you know, and South Philly. But she she did not grace us with her presence, but I'm sure she supported the coach in other ways. I grew up and educated in public schools and South Philly and then went to West Philadelphia High School, graduated went to the oldest Historical Black College University in the country to any State University of Pennsylvania. Founded in 1837, so when in the 60s, the mid 60s I entered college, graduated with a degree in education, taught elementary school for five years. And I'm so proud to have been a teacher before I worked in administration. Well, the school district of Philadelphia. I worked in a school district till about 25 years. Some of it overlapped with my being called by God to the ministry. Two of my most outstanding students or two students I know of, I should say. They make me proud to have been a, you know, public educator, but still the first Asian on the Philadelphia City Council. Councilman David O was my student in third grade, and he recently celebrated with me my milestone birthday with a citation from the City Council. And he's the first Asian, Korean, American, South Korean American on that city council to God be the glory. And another student is Mr. Frankie Francis, a very successful. A mortician funeral director in West Philadelphia with an he said, four or five sites, main branches in Southwest Philadelphia, and I'm proud to say both of those young men. One was in one year and one was another year back in the late sixties. They are both still living in the Southwest Philadelphia area where they grew up. To God, be the glory, so they wanted to bring something back to their community once the councilman was a successful director. That was called the ministry three story. I was very. Long before I knew that was a teacher and a school administrator, I close out my career the first time as a collaborative human relations at the central office. Twenty first in the Parkway School District of Philadelphia. And while they're doing a great work, all of the city working with desegregation in Philadelphia and to know that there were some racist practices within our schools, even in Philadelphia, we know about Little Rock, Arkansas, all we know about Prince Edward County, where my family is from close the schools because they didn't want black lights to go to school together. My cousins had to come north to finish their high school education, but I was blessed to work there, and during that time I was called to the ministry. You can't just go to the ministry. I want to be a pastor. I want to be a minister like that. God himself, God herself, because God is spirit. We worship God in spirit and you. So, you know, if I say him or her and you know, off and on, it's it's God's spirit. But God called me while I was working in the school district of Philadelphia to see the. I want to be a principal. I study. I got a bachelor's degree from Cheney in education. I got a master's education from Temple University. I got extended that started a doctoral program in educational administration at Temple University and in the meantime got a prepared to be a school principal. So. So I took the courses in English certified to be both a public school teacher and also public school elementary principal school principal. Little did I know what God had in mind, you know, just. I was on my way to be the superintendent of schools that might have been my aspiration, but ministry as such, no, it was never teacher. Yes, principal, yes, administrator, yes. But Pastor Minister was not, in my view. Maybe because women in the African-American tradition, even though there are many of us now still feel compared to the number of male African-Americans who are ministers. So I never thought growing up in the church, I knew I was going to be a good Christian. I knew what I was going to be a good Christian educator. But when God called me, I originally thought I was going to be a missionary to Haiti in the Caribbean, and I've traveled to Haiti and all over that Caribbean. But Katie, I've been more than I've been anywhere in the world. And I have traveled. All over the Caribbean, throughout Europe. Southeast Asia. And, of course, the United States. And. Europe and and Southeast Asia have been my most recent trips, you know, end up and mostly from industry. So I got a master of divinity at the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Used to be a city line and likes to avenue at the border of Philadelphia and balakian with that was another three years of training. What is God going to do with this? Not going to be a missionary to 80 or West Africa. But anyway, I did that and then I went on to get another massive degree. And religion at Temple University, so that's what three master's degrees? Oh my God. Well, I'm doing what I'm going to do with all this education and course. I use it and every everything I do. And then I got a doctorate from New York Theological Seminary. It's been twenty seven years now. Nineteen ninety four. So yes, that was called the ministry in the Church of God in Christ. By this time, the Baptist Church not left it because my mother and father are very active. My father was a deacon. My mother was the church organist 70 years before she died in twenty eighteen. So, you know, I had a strong family unit, mom and dad, mom, especially as she played all over the city, but at one church, maybe 50 or 60 years in one place at the end. But I was called to ministry and I was in the Baptist Church, wasn't encouraging me or any woman to be a minister, and the Church of God in Christ definitely was. You could be an evangelist and you could be a missionary, but to be called to be ordained and an elder, a reverend, a pastor. Oh no. But somehow, God. Allow me, after finishing seminary a few years later. To request of my pastor, the Bishop, O.T. Jones, junior doctors, sacred theology from Temple University, a great man of God, my mentor, especially for pastoral ministry and for following the gospel. As a parishioner, he encouraged me to go to seminary, but I don't think he knew I was going to be challenging the whole Church of God in Christ ordained. But that's what happened. I was ordained in the Church of God in Christ September 1st, 1985 broke with the Historical time. There'd been only one other woman in our area who had been ordained. And that was three years 1982 before me. There have been other women in doors for the military. I don't think there have been any other public ordinations. Oh, and the whole Church of God in Christ throughout the United States. So it was a historic moment. The pastor got special permission from the national leadership and the boards, and I was ordained to do work as the university chaplain. Little did I know that I wouldn't be able to do much more in the church. You've not been worked at. The young people listen to Haiti in West Africa, worked on the Bishop's Council with my pastor, was also a bishop of a hundred and ten churches. I did all kind of workshops. But the minute I got ordained looks like everything's shut down, shut down because the pastor and the bishop didn't like the churches were ready for women. No, I was ordained, he said. If I started a work, then I could bring it into the fold and I didn't feel that. And so I. Struggled and prayed and prayed and struggled with him and with my husband by now married and five years after I was ordained. I was so weary and tired that I tell it. I'm going to seek out another place to serve, and it was the Presbyterian Church USA, and maybe I didn't seek it out. They sought me out. I was in seminary doing my fieldwork. So the educator, educator, you do student teaching. When your pastor, you do you become an intro to partial intent and just like I've done with my education to be a teacher, here I was in the Bethel Presbyterian Church 19th in York's North Philadelphia, and that was my introduction to the Presbyterian Church USA. I was only going over there to help but going over there. But by 1990 I was ready to join and and a church called me. Somebody knew I was out there. I was doing pulpit supply for the Presbyterian, going to different churches, preaching what pastors were out sick or on study leave or vacation. And people knew I was out there. Church God Christ, pastor minister. I called to a Presbyterian church. Yeah. 1990, I was called to Lombardi Central Presbyterian Church. And that's how I got there. God somehow orchestrated. And the scriptures say the steps of a good woman are ordered by the Lord. Thirty seven, twenty three, and that's what happened. I got to seminary thinking I was just going there to get ready to be a missionary to Haiti. What? It's great. But I got and got unfolded. This whole thing, you could be called to be ordained. What the baptizing Oh, don't be God like, why am I doing this? But I finished and met the divinity and and the rest is history, I just got this, you know, through my struggle, you know, it was a struggle because I did not want to leave that wonderful spirit and love and prayer life and moving on the spirit in the Church of God in Christ to go with these frozen chosen periods. They call the frozen chosen. And but here I was being called be the pastor in 1990. To God, be the glory. What else do you want to know about that?

So what was your experience like lumber? Because I think you see I mentioned before that you were maybe the first woman minister.

Yeah, I think that's how I got into this. The project that your exhibit that you are presently showing displaying at the president Historical Society would distinguish me at lumber as I was first the first female pastor and its 100th when I got there, the church was one hundred and forty seven years old. So one thing about. Churches, black churches or black people, I should say in America are mostly aligned to Baptist or Methodist coaches. African Methodist Episcopal, founded by Richard Allen in the late Seventeen Hundreds 1787. Or the Baptist churches that started around the same era. I have to say we I'm talking about now and I'm sorry, not after slavery and slavery and after, so there's not a large concentration, I think three percent, maybe less than that in the Presbyterian Church right now of blacks, three percent. All these soldiers, some years 18, know the first black congregation was first African Presbyterian. Which, incidentally, is no more. I'm sorry. Very sad, that church was partnered with the Catholic Church and another church, Good Shepherd, in West Philadelphia. Now they have another name officially, said Rivers of every show to the new Riverside Church as of January 2021. So it's no accident that the display at the Presbyterian Society Historical Society zone is going on right now because it lives up. Presbyterian is that African-American throughout their history, starting in eighteen, oh, seven. Eighteen 07, there was a slave named John Glouster, his master white master released him to be the protector of blacks slaves. But then of course, they were freed and they started the first African Presbyterian, which was in South Philadelphia. Just a little caveat, I guess. The great scholar of the 19th century and 20th century was Dr W.E.B. Dubois. I don't know what his affiliation with God was anything but he was a great scholar and he was commissioned to come to Philadelphia. Late 1890s early, not just to do a study on the Philadelphia Negro, but, you know, we went from being slaves to being color. To be a Negro, to be an American, to ever get back to black. As a race in the United States of America, we change our name so much. But right now, I think we African-American and black. I think we settle on that, at least for now. In 2021. So the boys came in and did the study on the Negro Philadelphia Negro. He was commissioned by Susan B. Wharton. Everybody knows about the one school finance at the University of Pennsylvania. That family commissioned him. This strange black folks in Philadelphia free blacks. Oh, were they educated? They were free and educated, many of them, and they the impact of those blacks helped not only them in Philadelphia, but they helped. They were abolitionists. They work with their white counterparts to abolish slavery in America. And we had one, at least one station master in Philadelphia, and it was at the very church that I Pastor William Bell. Oh, it was a millionaire like Madam C.J. Walker, and I didn't object. Can you believe that people have made it those two we know about Madam C.J. Walker with products and the first step was getting the black women and we are still and he was and what do you call it, a station master or an underground railroad? And in 1870, Coke published a book. Chronicled those blacks that came to Philadelphia, an underground level, and maybe I think you could still buy it, I got it about 20 years ago, Dawn, when I was at number central, I was able to get a copy for every person in the congregation. 18, not 1872, wrote the book Underground Railroad. So he was a member of Lomborg's Central, and there were many others distinguished. But anyway, I got to remember Central and. I was the first female pastor. All the passes were mostly black, we had a few whites who were in a room like Caucasians because we had a Presbyterian Church USA, so it's a predominantly white organization with black members and distinguished members. Most of these people, you know, more distinguished and at anyway, some challenges as a female. There are people who still feel like women shouldn't pastor, but it was OK, it wasn't enough to push me out. I stayed there five years and we did some great work and this is how this dissertation that you have on display. And I have my copy. This book is a book. This is called The Miracle on 47th Street The Reactivation of the Spiritual Life and Public Social Justice Ministry, the Lombard Presbyterian Church. This is Volume one May 1994. This is the actual transcript of the dissertation that distinguished, you may say. As the first female, I did this to be doing their 150th anniversary. Didn't know that, but the Law Order must have brought me there. This is the volume two, which is twice as big as the other one. I'm trying to get this printed for Historical Society. This is Volume two appendices. This is what grounded this book. Nobody had done the work here. It was out there. And as the pastor, I traveled all over the country because where were you going to get the information on this church session meetings? The minutes that would keep, you know, the known for record keeping and archives, you know, because where you work right now, Sonya is the National Archives at all by the U.S. I know how blessed it was. I have to come down to disclose. The only thing I can find was something on a man named John and we've. Who was the pastor? Of Lot Central. From 1861 to 1971. He was a free black out of New York. He was the first man to graduate from the seminary of the very prestigious Union Theological Seminary in New York. He was the first black, and he came here, it was ordained, he served, he became the moderator to something in the Presbyterian, the personal. Who is the. It's not a paid position, but it's a prestigious. Was it you, you you preside over the meetings of all the ministers and elders that come together every month? He was that in 1865, Don Barnaby. I found that out from the wreckage at the President Noah's Ark. It was called wasn't called Philadelphia. Gulfport What was your dear doctor, Jon Bon Jovi? That's pretty much all I got on him and his baby. When he lived, I die, but I went all over the country. I went to New York City, Chicago to the Newberry, a private library. They had stuff going on that I could believe it. I went down to Tulane in New Orleans. His second letters, a doctor rewrote when he went to Howard University in 71. Howard joked the very prestigious Black University down in Washington, DC. He started. He was the organizer of the theological department. Dr. John Brennan raped a black man, even though it was how it was started by the American Missionary Society and a man named General allowed a white general in the Civil War. He started for black people in 18, but I don't know. Sixty seven, something like that. He called for Dr. John Binary. He left his apartment in Philadelphia. What did DC found? The theological department. And because of Dr. Reef, this is another bigger thing the movie Hidden Figures, Dr. Reef brought money to Howard. He didn't have none but his Caucasian, his white Presbyterian. Brothers and sisters, because he went there, they put money in Howard Alleluia. They established even though the American Cancer Society and Dr. General, how it started, it was Presbyterian money that got Howard University off the ground. Anybody came to Howard in an eighteen seventies. Uh-Huh. There, after, because Dr. Reid was there for four or five years, they channeled money into that theological department. So even if you were studying education or law, medicine or whatever architecture, you had to come through the theological department to get that money out. Oh my God. And the rest is history. He stayed for four or five years down there and just about starved to death. They didn't have money to pay him. He came back to Philadelphia and passed it another forty five years, so total, maybe fifty five years. Dr. Reef, John Brennan Reef, Pastor, Dunbar Central and. And then it was America's and died in, I think, 1916, so that was a part of my dissertation, you know, just going to looking at who, what is Historical who these Philadelphia Negroes that W.E.B. Dubois talked about. They were right there. Some of them in Dunbar. Essential. That's what distinguishes no central above the first church, which was first African. I know my Presbyterian brothers sisters will be a little upset about that, but all I do is look at the histories, comparative histories. Nobody wants to be one up on the other. It is what the truth is. It is the reality of what happened. No central was called, though Presbyterian in the old days, but they quickly changed their name because the Second Presbyterian Church, it was a riot and it was burned down in the eighteen forties. And so rather than to keep that the African power on it, they went on to just name it after the street where the church was, which was run by street in South Philadelphia. All right. What else do you need to know? I go on and on.

Well, I think, you know, one of the things that we're interested in is, you know, the history of Lombard Street, Central Presbyterian Church and, you know, also where you've gone since then and what you've done since your time at Lombard Street Central and what you continue to do today.

Okay. Oh, no, central. Started in South Philadelphia, and so I talked about W.E.B. Dubois, the great scholar from Harvard, in the 1870s 80s. He was younger than Reeve in some of those, but he was distinguished and I'm sure they knew him. He was a young boy up on, you know, when we started, really? But anyway, all those churches were below Wall Street and South Philadelphia. And as they moved the church I grew up in, Union Baptist was one of those churches. It moved to 19th and Fitzwater, on the other side, brought the first African Presbyterian move to. 18, the Christian. It's now at 40 second about and it is no more, but the building. And little did I know as a child that I would be a Presbyterian because my aunt lived thirty five, the judges 18 Christian and we were Baptist, so weren't even looking at Presbyterian, you know they would. People came in in our neighborhood. But anyway, uh, no. Central. Moved from, well, the original building is still there. At eight between eighth and ninth, closer to ninth and Lombard. Right now, it's still there. It's the Custom House now, wait, maybe I have a million dollars. They could not change the outside or the gates. You could just walk down there from where you are. So you get four or five blocks, it's right there. It's gated as it was in 18. I don't know when they moved in there. Maybe some say like 1850, maybe they started in 1844, but by 1840, 50 or so they got in the ground and they built a very what the newspapers called a respectable house of worship. A respectable house of worship, which meant it was a nice church, wasn't a storefront, OK? It was one with pews and organ and pulpit. And these these Philadelphia Negroes went there, and I could imagine they were like Booz Allen. Come on, they were. I'm not here for people in here, but these hold up Negroes, whether they were Presbyterian Episcopalian Baptist method people. I mean, the girls were free and 18 objects at all. And slavery wasn't about still 18, but 60 coming legally. Legally, we never got there. We still struggling for the rights right now to enjoy Black Lives Matter. But 1863 it was when the Emancipation Proclamation. So for sixty three years in Philadelphia, Negroes 1892, it is a great day free. So the white folks wanted to know what makes them tick. And so they so they so they come to find out about it. They had their own notes of fire engines. You know, they don't know black unit. Oh my god. They hate the YMCA and the YWCA Young Men's Christian Association, which is still here today. The question this young woman's Christian fifteenth and between 15th and 16th, 16th and 17th on Katherine, that's no more. It's the condos are high in apartments right now, but the men's young men's Christian Association is like an athletic place with a pool and a gym, and all that where young people could come in and for recreation. And, of course, down south the least dealt Marian Anderson Playground 17 and academy between Kasman and Fitzwater. So yes, no, I've moved from a between eighth and ninth and Lombard Street that's really got the name number two. In 1939, they moved to fork in Appleton. That's where I'll game, you know, years later. So thirty nine, when I got there, 90, you know, that's still they're still there right now, and they're still a congregation. How valuable? I don't know. I hear that something's going on over there. They have closed yet. And I just want to sadly say that not only did first African go into a partnership, but the reason the people of Lombardi's ventral some of the distinguished members, like a man called William still. And and who else was in that group? Christopher Perry, the founder of the Philadelphia Tribune, which is the longest standing black newspaper in America, still going? They started a church called the memorial after John Boehner raised their distinguished pastor after he died, that church dissolved. I must say, 10 years ago. Could no longer function, and those members are in different places throughout the West Philadelphia area, so the remote to West Valley and they moved into a Quaker meeting house. No stained glass, just these big windows covered with drapes, you know, inside, sometimes they don't. I guess the No Street Central Presbyterian Church where they put drapes up, you know, and the drapes might be, what, 15 16 feet, you know, because the windows are big, you know, it looks like a plantation, almost. This building looks like a plant. The columns big old yard. When I got there first time, I said, Oh my God, this is a glorified plantation. You know, most churches, respectable black churches have stained glass window. And this started had none. Nothing, nope, no esthetics like that plane because it was like a mate now. OK. And they're still there and and and but they did great work. When I get the let me just say something about the dissertation. My primary sources were letters from Dr. John Boehner, Reeve, from Howard Beckett to. To Lomborg, to the people of Mumbai Central or to the American Missionary Society that was supposed to be two people paying him just about starve down there when he was there, he'd been a respectable pastor of the Philadelphia Negro Church and then he down here struggling, trying to get out off the ground. Okay, so write those letters. I found those down to Tulane. I'll be down in New Orleans, a session meeting minutes. You know, we as a denomination, keep the record. So there were some bulletins. There were some newsletters, original sources, church bulletin. They did a lot of classical stuff. A town hall and wherever you could meet with Academy of Music, they are, but they would at opera sing that's come in like manners and at concerts. Somebody in 1894 wrote a book called The 50 Year History of the Mumbai Central Church by a man named Robert Jones. That was the groundwork for what I was doing because I'm at another eight years on today. So I went to the Newberry Library. I talked about that you got up to like President Historical Society Lincoln University. Dr. Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. He got the first honorary doctorate. Dr. John Bindery, now Lincoln, was founded by our brothers and sisters in the White Presbyterian Church, Lincoln out there in Oxford, B.A., in 1854. And the professors were mostly white in the beginning, but they saw just outstanding black men. They gave him the first everything. It's funny to me because God was raising up or, you know, ordering steps. The first honorary doctorate was Dr. John Brown and Reeve. And and then they started getting black out, and then, of course, the first black president of a Lincoln in Pennsylvania, Lincoln University, was Julian Bond Father Horace Bond. Now we know Julian Bond civil rights out of Georgia, the congressman, a great civil rights icon who died maybe a few years ago, but his father was the first black president of Lincoln. And, of course, Howard Howard University. To this day, they have a black dean. I know her, Dr. Yolanda Pierce. I the e-mail and that did. And some history. Yeah. 50 Oh God. Over the years when she was installed, maybe three years ago that much. But how university, where and when we were when I was at pastor as on board, we had an extensive program. With Howard, I met the dean at the Hampton Ministers Conference one year down in Virginia, and he agreed to come and to talk, and then we met with him and we started an extensive program where people could come to learn bisexual and get Bible certificates and theological theological work if they came to so many courses. We brought Dr. Newsome, Clarence Newsome, who was the dean at our at the time. Dean at the Divinity School. And let me just say that divinity school is a whole block long now from the little fledgling theological department. But Dr. B. It is a whole block all way around the divinity school right now. And and it doesn't only teach Christianity that Muslims, there are Jews, there they are Buddhists. There is a divinity school is so big and so outstanding right now. Dr. Reef, you started all this. Yes. Yes, he did. And goodness, whatever. Whatever God gives you for what you do on Earth, you get it. Part of it's going to be education ministers. And alcohol is going to be force based on meditating. It was both and I think I'm like you. That's why I talk a lot about it. I think my ministry shadows is, you know, and and to God be the glory. The dissertation was in full three parts, 1844 in 1894, who did a highlight. Dr, what was going on in the country or in Philadelphia, but all of the Williamsville? Dr. John Bindery. And a woman named Dr. Caroline. Still, she was William Stella's daughter, and she married a man called Matthew Anderson. Princeton graduate, Princeton Black folks. Yeah, yeah. As she married him. She was the first one or the first black to get a medical degree at Oberlin Problem. But I don't remember Lombard sexual. Her father was William, still the millionaire and the Underground Railroad station. She married a minister who came to Philadelphia at the request of Dr. Rhee to pastor a mission that that no sexual Historical that allows the mission, which is now. Larry and Presbyterian brought in Diamond right on Devil's campus, still there. One of the distinguished churches within the Presbyterian connection, and I was there among black folks, I Presbyterian Church, so that's the first 50 years I did in groups of three, 350, 1844, 1894, 1890, 1944. There was a woman elder. Christopher Perry founded The Tribune. He's in a second 50 years that a newspaper is still going. Christopher Barry, there was a woman named and Titus I can't remember right now what and charges that she was either somebody and what do you call the settlements goals stuff the early part of the settlement movement? And then it was a man Dr. William IHMS, William Lloyd Imes. He looked like he was. He could pass for white, but he was the pastor of Lombard Central, and he went on to be the president of Knoxville College in Tennessee. No, central. And then the last group, 1944, nineteen ninety four. Dr. John Coleman. He stated no. He was the second long, longest pastor. He was there from 19 25 years. Oh, and he was the one who brought the church from South Philadelphia to 40 second involved and in the university city area. It was a woman named George McMurry. She was handicapped, but she went on to be quite a social work advocate and educator in New York. And then there's a guy who said Lebanese 89 Dr. John Gross. It is a member as a child. A number of essential. And at the age of near 40, he went back to college, got his undergrad at Temple Master's and doctorate in social work, yet lives in Philadelphia, somewhere on the Parkway Center city. OK, what else do you need to know?

Well, I want to be mindful of your time, I know you had some appointments later on in the afternoon. So did you want to keep going from here or do you want to stop here? We can stop here, if you like.

Well, let me just say this. OK. There's a connection from the past to what's going on right now with Black Lives Matter. Why do we as a people, African American Negro, call it whatever you call us, still have to fight to be equal, to be recognized as people who matter? Oh. So whatever they were doing to fight abolition in the what? Eighteen hundreds, nineteen hundred and now into the 21st century. The struggle continues. It's the same struggle, different people. But we're still what Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, William Still and abolitionist did back then. We're fighting the same battle. Because W.E.B. Dubois said. And his book, The Souls of Black, Folks. A hundred years ago that the major problem in America would be that of the color line. Now, you said that in the 20th century, and we're in the 21st century and is still a major concern of our nation. Race. Race matters. Why do we have to say Black Lives Matter? We shouldn't have to say that we've been here. We didn't come here on our own aimlessly ships and we built this country without blood, sweat and tears. Why do we have to say we matter? Twenty twenty one? Why is it still a battle for just being human and equal? We know God made us so scripted, someone would just say God made us, not we ourselves, we always people sheep of his pasture. And the documents of the United States of America, the Declaration 1776 of Independence. Is it all of us have what unalienable rights? Now, this is the country fighting against England and saying, we want to be free, we want we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We're all down by our creator with certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, pursuit that and then it ends with. There should be liberty and justice for all. And you know that they're safe when they wrote that Thomas Jefferson and other slaves, Washington slaves. Benjamin Franklin, the founding fathers. They had slaves. So they didn't even consider us. Other than that, we would sat on their property. And so when they wrote the Constitution 1776, the declaration. Constitution 1787, I might still be storing it. They counted us in the Constitution, black folks with three fifths of a person. And some of the stuff is glad to give it up to a lot of people. Oh fuck. Three-Fifths an application of the man, it turns slaves. He may have eight and a half people, but crazy. Hmm. But. Has connected us to history. So you had the era of the Frederick Douglass and John Boehner. And there was another man, J.C. Penney, Ken and Henry Highland Garnet, who was the president, met up a past minister who took on Frederick Douglass. He said, Don't let these white folks off the hook. A Presbyterian to on Frederick Douglass, he was a contemporary, well known about it for me, Alan Garnett. But he was very important to the movement of abolition in this country. And he was a contemporary with Frederick Douglass first that was got to work with Lincoln and all of that, but these other Presbyterian ministers were lacking H. AC Percy Pennington, New Yorkers, they were all New Yorkers, was New York and predicted, and they went all over the country, but they were from New York. And so they started, you know, that was a part of the early struggle. And, you know, we took our hats off to Richard Allen and they joked that all of them absolutely Jones, the first black Episcopal priest we took did in Philadelphia, but we missed Presbyterian history and what we did. William still, Dr. Reeve, Christopher Perry, William Lawrence. All these people, they were impacting the civil rights movement of their day. Through the media, newspaper filled up the Tribune with this article on me, and the Black Presbyterian was written on April nine, 2021, for your project exhibit, but that is the very newspaper founded by a member of Lomborg's. I don't think it all connects to what's going on now because of Martin Luther King in the fifties. Emmett Till gets killed in Mississippi, murdered 15 year old boy Daniel mowed it because they say, whistled at a white woman. Here comes Martin Luther King. The movement began to build up again. Jesse Jackson is one of the last groups. 11. Reverend Jesse Jackson But that was still the same movement for freedom for black in America. Now where are we now? That's what. You know, it's like, Lord, why do we have to have a Black Lives Matter movement? Because we still don't have equality? It's no accident that Kamala Harris is the vice president, she's Asian and black and all of that first black female and first black, the first Asian vice president, United States. Now that's Barack Obama. In the 200 some year history became president 2008 to 2016. All this is a part of the same movement trying to get people to say that we are not just property. We're not ignorant. We're not shuffling anymore. We're not saying yes, master. Yes. Same with that, right? That was so ignorant. But it was the church, the Church of Jesus Christ. It was the Mlambo I see central and all mother, Bethel and me. It was St. Thomas mother, African Amy, mother, African soil united. These black churches who gave undergirded. Our people gave them hope and helped them to fight to fight for freedom. And that's why it's important that you have this exhibit up. Oh, it's the right time. President Historical Society and whoever looks at this, this is the very right time to do something like they're doing. I am so grateful for the opportunity I was given. To serve the people of Lombardy, essential to be a Presbyterian minister who came by way of Church of God in Christ and a Black Baptist tradition of my parents and my grandparents and my great grandparents as all of them, all of those things. Nobody in my family has been through denomination, but that was the path that the Lord ordered for me. And I'm so grateful I have a daughter. She just got married last year. She'll be. She's thirty four. She's pregnant. I'm going have a grandbaby next year. Oh my god. I'm old lady. I'm not young. She was very late in my life coming. And my husband is deceased 15 years. And I'm missing, I never missed a beat. God has been so good to me. I get to do whatever I want to do. I'm serving jokes. Yes, I'm helping people. I live well, I travel and I want to. Before that, before the pandemic. I just let me just say this. I just came back. October 2nd is that weekend in October? It was that it was my birthday weekend to an end to racism in America. Oh, but that is not racism in America retreat. In Saint John in the Virgin Islands, we had to go all the way to St. John's and talk about racism. It was good. It was good because we weren't Caribbean and the water and looked at the papers at all. But you told my anti-racism America they had their own story of it in the Caribbean about racism. But we talked about USA. What are we going to do back in the USA? And I was with a wonderful group of women, all women, mostly Caucasian, but I call them sisters in the struggle because they're fighting the same thing that I was writing about in my dissertation. Same thing. We're still trying to do. Same day Martin Luther King was trying to do the same thing. W.E.B. Dubois is trying to do what he and some others founded the National Association Negro Colored People in ACP, founded by W.E.B. Dubois and others in Nineteen Oh, not states of Harriet Tubman. And hit me on that and Frederick Douglass, the same struggle for freedom. And I want to close with this about Dr. James Cone. He died last year year before great advocate. It was a theologian, parts of lots. You write about a black theology of liberation. He upset the whole theological world across the globe because the world, he said, God is black. White people couldn't handle it. We know God is a spirit and God we worship God is and to come on. But he is absolved because he is a blue, blue, blue blooded Jesus. No, no. Take that down. Black folks in churches get a new stained glass window that is not Oh God is to you. God bless you, whoever you love. He relates to all of us. So if you praise Jesus up, put, put a black Jesus, put a Latino Jesus because God is spirit. But if you want to note, don't don't let that make you think that you are lesser than them because that that face you're looking at is white. Jesus wasn't that he was in the Middle East. He had to be brown. Even if it was, you had to be no sun. And like sometimes colors had a black theology of liberation. And he let us know that if a church loses its identity, that means no longer struggles for freedom. It no longer knows its population and consequently loses itself in its organizational routine. That came from a book called My Soul Looks Back. Nineteen eighty two, he said. For any church to devote an inordinate amount of time to itself is to deny Jesus Christ from its Christian identity is derived, in other words, but we can't just go to a shelf and say no more. I love the Lord, but you just can't go to church. Don't want to do that. Go no job up in your Lexus and Mercedes and your Rolls-Royce Bentleys. But I don't. Some folks are doing well. Good. Most black people are still under poverty line below the poverty line. But some of those middle class folks, we don't really know we're living in the suburbs, so I guess not the black colleges we send them to Harvard, Yale, Columbia. Come on, Bucknell. They talk about no Cheney. Cheney gave me everything that I am other than from the lower back my start in life. It made me know I was somebody. Black colleges do that for black kids. They bring you up and make you. Somebody makes top right look right. Uh. Do right college. Because I'm for black colleges. For kids. Yeah. If I can't go there. But we should try not to dismiss our schools because they brought us up in the churches and black colleges are the undercurrent undergirding of all that we do in America. And so we can't come there and I isn't given up the at church today. No. How what are you going to do for the struggle of freedom in America? When my daughter and her then fiancee went out on their own because she's seen me go to rallies, Trayvon Martin died. I was downtown with Reverend Al Sharpton. Uh huh.. But my daughter and my fiance, they went onto the Parkway and almost got beat down by the cops in Philly. Last summer, I said, Lord, cover my child, I didn't know she was gone. That was a peaceful protest at the art museum Black Lives Matter. One day watched the city go down. That way, the police held up the police department head to battle helmets on and try to put those kids. Oh my God! She called me. Historical said. Mom, I almost died. I think they'll get out of there. Oh my god. But she felt what I've been feeling and what my mother and my grandparents and my auntie felt. You're not you don't have the freedom in America. As other people do. I want to end this conversation. Just saying that God has been good. God is still on the throne. I don't care what's going on. They are mistreated us. Girl name Michelle Alexander wrote the book, The New Jim Crow, The Mass Incarceration of Black and Brown Folks in America. She wrote about 10 years ago, powerful book. Talking about the injustices to us in the legal system, locking up our kids and taking our best and brightest and throwing them in jail for little stuff, and yet they let a boy in Kenosha, Wisconsin, yesterday get off and go and do people. That is the injustice that we see in America and that we have to keep fighting. I'm optimistic. I'm not mad, I'm mad, but I'm not going to smile and grin when I know that there's work to be done and I don't want people just found out what to do out of that. Oh, no, no, I do better than that. God is worship worthy of all praises, but we also have to take what we get from the Lord. The power, the spirit. And take it into the world and make the difference and make this world a better place. I thank you for this opportunity to share my story. And I pray that. Those that see it or hear it will be inspired to be better and to do better to make this world a better place.

All right, well, thank you, Linda, go ahead and stop the recording now. Mm-Hmm. It's quite.