If you couldn’t fit the Sacred Ground Curriculum into your schedule, we want to offer suggestions on how to grow along with us in ways that may work for you.
Consider watching American Creed, which was our main focus for the first two meetings. In this PBS video from 2018, we found the conversations of Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice and David Kennedy with first generation college students at Stanford University to open us up to life more broadly in America. We were blown away as the creator of MoveOn.org met with the creator of the TeaParty as they joined in Living Room Conversations to find common ground as Americans.
If you are a movie person, some of our members suggested watching “Thirteenth” a Netflix video about the 13th Amendment directed by Ava DuVernay focusing on the Thirteenth Amendment and its continuation of slavery through the criminalization of African Americans. Very powerful and insightful. You thought slavery was abolished? Not if a person is imprisoned.
PBS has been running a series on the Black Church with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
CNN has been running a six-part series on the life of Abraham Lincoln entitled Lincoln: Divided we Stand, narrated by Sterling K. Brown
Our Deacon, Alan Christiansen recommended three videos that the Deacons reviewed at their retreat.
1. Do the Right Thing is a 1989 American comedy-drama film produced, written, and directed by Spike Lee. It stars Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, John Turturro, and Samuel L. Jackson. The story explores a Brooklyn neighborhood’s simmering racial tension, which culminates in tragedy and violence on a hot summer day.
2. Crash, a 2005 film with Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Thandie Newton, Karina Arroyave. Los Angeles citizens with vastly separate lives collide in interweaving stories of race, loss and redemption.
3. The Last Black Man in San Francisco, 2019. Its plot centers on the efforts of a young black man to reclaim his childhood home, a now-expensive Victorian house in a gentrified neighborhood of San Francisco.
We’ll try to offer updates on the curriculum. We encourage you to follow along with the films and reading recommendations.
Fr. David, Mary Pacher, and Sarah Roskam