Two Black Churches

Song Collection

Two Black Churches is a song set in two movements, "Ballad of Birmingham" and "The Rain." This work is a musical reflection of two significant and tragic events perpetrated at the hands of white supremacists in two Black churches, decades apart.

The events were:

-The 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which took the lives of four girls;

-The 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church Shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, resulting in the deaths of nine parishioners.

Date: 2020Composer: Shawn E. OkpebholoText: Dudley Randall, Marcus Amaker

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