And it’s the place after a long and tiresome journey to which we can always return and call home.” Well, I believe, I believe I will go back home and be a servant of the Lord.”Īs he was taking his leave of the congregation with more hugs and embraces, there was one last bit of his voice-over saying, “The Black church was the place where our people somehow made a way out of no way. He finished his time in the pulpit leading the congregation in singing the words, “Oh, I believe, I believe I will go back home. And I came to this church every Sunday and I joined the choir. “I had made a deal with Jesus,” he continued in the pulpit.

But he was serious about the experience even though as he later explained in a PBS virtual news conference last week, it turned out his mother had not been as sick as she thought. The congregation shared a laugh at Gates’ punch line, and he laughed, too. “So, I got up, looked in the mirror and said, ‘Uh-oh.” “About three days later, she got better and came home,” he says. And I told Jesus, ‘If you let my mother live, I’ll give my life to Christ,’” he continues, taking off his glasses and wiping his eyes. So, they took her to the hospital and I went upstairs to my bedroom,” he adds, his voice breaking. And mama hugged me and told me she was going to die. “This is where my life in the church started,” he tells the congregation. He’s then shown in the pulpit testifying to the congregation, many of whom have hugged and warmly greeted him as he entered the church.

“After so many years distance from it, I’d finally come to understand more fully the meaning and the magic of the Black church,” Gates is heard saying in voice-over. There is a symmetry to the series as it comes to an end in the final minutes with Gates walking back down the asphalt path leading to the front of Waldon United Methodist Church. Out of it came our Black businesses, our Black educational institutions.”īack to Gates, who says, “It’s been a sanctuary where Black people could interpret The Bible in their own images and praise God in their own voices, creating some of the most sublime music the world has ever heard.”Īnd on the word “heard” the screen fills with the sound and image of a young Aretha Franklin singing in church. Al Sharpton says, “The Black church was more than a spiritual home. “I don’t know how we could have survived as a people without it.” “The church gave people a sense of value and belonging and of worthiness,” Oprah Winfrey says. “The lessons I learned here, the power of faith, the importance of community, have remained with me and sustained me in the same way the Black church has sustained the African American people from the days of slavery to this day.”Īnd then come some of the talking heads, and I mean that in a good way in the case of this series. “My mother’s family has worshipped here for generations,” he says as he mounts the steps and enters the church.

Henry louis gates jr the black church