Black Preaching and African-American History

Randall Stephens

Listen to Sunday's All Things Considered (NPR) for a feature on black preaching from the 18th century to the present. Guy Raz speaks with Martha Simmons about her new edited volume, Preaching with Sacred Fire. The story includes audio clips of 20th-century sermons and some insight on how black preaching through the centuries opens a window onto the African-American experience.

For African-Americans, social movements tend to start in the pulpit. From slavery to civil rights to the election of the first African-American president, preachers have given sermons that moved black Americans to tears and to action. >>>

See also,

Edward Macknight Brawley, ed, The Negro Baptist Pulpit: A Collection of Sermons and Papers . . . (Philadelphia, 1890).

"Reminiscence of a Negro Preacher," Georgia Writer's Project, Library of Congress, November 7, 1939.

"A Holiness Preacher," South Carolina Writer's Project, Library of Congress, January 20, 1939.

Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux & Congregation, YouTube, late 1930s(?)

T. D. Jakes, "How to Fight with the Devil," YouTube, 2007.

Martin Luther King, "But if Not," Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, November, 1967, Internet Archive.