Interviews

Telling the story of The Black Church PBS documentary

“The church, as wonderful as it has been, has been a very difficult place for some people.”

Stacey L. Holman produced and directed the documentary series The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song, hosted by Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. (see also a review of Gates’s companion book). She spoke to her longtime friend Katara Patton, the Cen­tury’s community engagement editor, after the series aired on PBS last month. For an extended version of this conversation, watch the video.

How did it come about for you to work on this series?

I was a producer-director on Henry Louis Gates’s Reconstruction series, and rumor had it that he would be doing a series on the Black church. I put my name in the hat, and God answered my prayers.