Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World

Preaching & Worship

“The son of a great preacher called to lead Chicago’s historic Trinity United Church of Christ, the Reverend Dr. Otis Moss III has long had the homiletic arts coursing through his veins. With the publication of his Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale, he brings his full imaginative gifts to bear in calling on the world to reject the easy, self-satisfied pietism of Sunday morning for a ‘Blues sensibility,’ steeped in the history of a Blues people, viewing life from ‘the underside’ as a struggle all week long. Urging us to meet children of the Hip-Hop generation where they are, Moss draws on a rich cultural legacy, from the griots of West Africa to the poets, playwrights, and performers of the Diaspora, to teach us that transformation can be found only in courageously encountering the suffering that has marked our journey from Calvary through the Middle Passage, to the cotton fields, to the troubled city streets of today. Blue Note Preaching is preaching and reading at its most profound, reconnecting us to those lights of the past who led movements out of the wilderness not by talking down but by lifting up every voice heard between the ‘blues moan’ and the ‘gospel shout.'”

Madison Park

History & Biography

“In this beautifully written book, Eric Motley shares his personal odyssey of grace and gratitude. This is a memoir about love—love of family, community, literature, language, and ideas. The roots Eric L. Motley traces in his hometown of Madison Park, Alabama, a place founded by former slaves not long after the Emancipation, serve as a powerful reminder of the shaping influences that family, faith, and community have in African American lives—so, too, the love of mentors, neighbors, and teachers who nurture those lives in the crucial years of their development. In the personal odyssey of this remarkable black Renaissance man, in whom a passion for learning was cultivated at a young age and through whom others have been touched from the Deep South to the White House, we find inspiration in the history that binds the citizens of a place across generations and hope for every child, whatever their birth, blessed to be raised among those who see education not only as a value but as a vital spark to be shared.”