Whether in attacks on our sacred spaces or attacks upon our sacred bodies, the denigration and desecration of Black life has continually been a public exhibition in the United States. While manifested in many forms, this country’s relationship with anti-Black violence is inextricably tied to religion. Christianity has housed this exhibition through chapels on slave plantations, lynching picnics after Sunday morning worship, and the fiery crosses raging outside Black churches across the South. In 1963, African America was acquainted with the severity of this reality as dynamite struck the edifice of the 16th Street Baptist Church maiming its interior and exterior walls. These moments in history are the exemplification of the cyclical attacks and forms of trespassing that Black sacred spaces, and its people, have endured. Standing in the ashes, this panel is invested in the history and memorialization of Black religious sites through discourses on ecclesial violences, property and property rights, and preservation.

Panelist: Ari Colston (Princeton University), Ngozi Harrison (University of California, Los Angeles), Richard X (Fordham University)