The City and the Cross—Episode 1: From the Ground Up

In the first episode of Commonweal's new podcast series, The City and the Cross, host and inaugural Centennial Fellow Aaron Robertson traces the origins and flowering of Black Catholic Detroit throughout the twentieth century—from the era of Jim Crow, when Black Catholics were regularly excluded from white parishes, through the 1960s and 1970s, when the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council coincided with the civil-rights and Black Power movements. 

Robertson speaks with the musicians who transformed Catholic liturgy by bringing gospel into the sanctuary, the parishioners who built Black Catholic communities from scratch, and the activists who compelled the local Church to recognize Black leadership. 

For more information about the episode, click here. To learn more about Commonweal's Centennial Fellowship, click here.