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Hello and welcome to The Excerpt excerpt I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday

February 25th, 2024. In 1963, 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, the first Black church in Birmingham, tragically became the site of a bombing

that killed four young girls who were attending Sunday school.

The church was subsequently repaired and became a symbol of the civil rights movement.

This Black History Month, we wanted to celebrate the role of black churches in advancing

a more just and progressive society.

But why have so many historic black churches

been abandoned or fallen into disrepair?

And who is working to save them?

Here with more on the effort to preserve historic black churches,

we're joined now by Juan Floyd Thomas,

Associate Professor of African American Religious History at Vanderbilt University.

Juan, thanks so much for joining me. And thank you for having me.

Let's begin with the historical significance of black churches

in the United States, particularly during pivotal moments

such as the Civil Rights Movement, how did these churches function as

catalysts for social change?

Black churches have been indispensable in terms of thinking about issues of faith and culture and identity and purpose in this nation.

From the colonial era some 400 years ago to the current age of cloud computing that we're in now.

The black church has been a space of not just intellectual or

...