-Philip Yancey
Welcome to TRUTH QUEST – an in depth journey, exploring the history of race in America. Ken Kemp hosts a five-part series (seven episodes) featuring 17 fellow-travelers from the nine-day Civil Rights Tour of the South. Visit the sites, learn the names and places that tell the story of injustice, cruelty and terror – but more – resistance, resilience and flourishing. You’ll hear our pilgrims share in their own voice – the passion, the expanded awareness and renewed commitment to fairness, equity and reconciliation.
Meet the Truth Quest Contributors
TRUTH QUEST brings Ken's participation on the Civil Rights Tour of the South to his podcast. This is the first of five episodes, bringing sixteen voices (of 39 travelers) to the microphone. Each will share what motivated them to join the tour, how the history and sites impacted them, and the commitments that emerge from this quest. In future episodes, we'll visit the iconic sites, from New Orleans to Jackson to Memphis to Montgomery to Selma, and finally, Birmingham.
Meet our contributors.
Listen to the entire series - TRUTH QUEST: Exploring the History of Race in America - in their own words.
Become a Patron - Click on the link to learn how you can become a Patron of the show. Thank you!
The Podcast Official Site: TheBeachedWhiteMale.com
In this second installment of Ken's special series, TRUTH QUEST - Exploring the History of Race in America, we launch the Civil Rights tour of the South in New Orleans. The Whitney Plantation in St. John the Baptist Parish is a non-profit dedicated to preserving the history and legacy of slavery in Louisiana. You'll hear an in-depth description of the exhibits, displays, and elegant plantation house and how those displays impacted our team of pilgrims. In this episode, we are invited to a team "debrief," in which several share their personal responses to a history that has been hidden until now. Then Ken takes us to the French Quarter on a bustling Saturday evening in the heart of the New Orleans. Under the tutelage of master-guide, Leon A. Waters, the team wanders down the Mississippi River and Washington Artillery Park, to Jackson Square, by the St. Louis Cathedral, the Federal Courthouse, and the Slave Exchange, along the narrow streets filled with iconic architecture, surrounded by eager crowds, street vendors and musicians, lively multitudes lined up for the annual Pride Month Parade - New Orleans style. SHOW NOTES
Meet our contributors.
Listen to the entire series - TRUTH QUEST: Exploring the History of Race in America - in their own words.
Become a Patron - Click on the link to learn how you can become a Patron of the show. Thank you!
The Podcast Official Site: TheBeachedWhiteMale.com
In this installment of Ken's TRUTH QUEST series, we continue to relive the Civil Rights Tour of the South. Dr. John Perkins, author of 17 books, founder of Voice of Calvary and Harambee, and Christian activist in the Civil Rights movement welcomes our thirty-nine travelers in Jackson Mississippi. At age 92, he brings a Sunday morning message, entertains questions, and signs books. The bus goes to downtown Jackson to the Masonic Temple, headquarters for the Mississippi NAACP, SNCC, and SCLC. The group is welcomed by a group of senior citizens who were active in the Civil Rights Movement in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. They are, each one, "Living Legends." The following morning, the group arrives at the Emmett Till Intrepid Center in Money, Mississippi, a memorial to young Emmett Till who was brutally murdered and became an icon of the movement. Fourteen of the thirty-nine travelers share their reflections, ending with a beautiful dinner at the home of Albert Tate's (Founding Pastor of Fellowship Monrovia) mother. SHOW NOTES
Meet our contributors.
Listen to the entire series - TRUTH QUEST: Exploring the History of Race in America - in their own words.
Become a Patron - Click on the link to learn how you can become a Patron of the show. Thank you!
The Podcast Official Site: TheBeachedWhiteMale.com
The tour bus delivers our travelers for two days in historic Memphis, Tennessee. The National Civil Rights Museum rests on the site of the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King lost his life to an assassin's bullet while standing on the balcony with his trusted friends, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Abernathy, and Andrew Young. The Museum is housed in a comprehensive series of buildings that outlines the history of Slavery from 1619 to the present day. Exhibits feature the story of resistance and the champions of the Civil Rights Movement. Our tour explores the I AM A MAN Memorial Park and the Sanitation Worker's Strike of 1968 that brought Dr. King to Memphis. Then, we move on to the Burkle House, commonly known as the Slave Haven, a stop on the Underground Railroad. STAX RECORDS in Memphis launched American soul music, celebrated in the STAX Museum where careers were launched including Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and many others. Spoken word artist Rev. Jesse Jackson and comedians Moms Mabley and Richard Pryor got their start in the STAX studios. We end this edition of TRUTH QUEST on Beale Street, the home of B.B. King, Ida B. Wells, and The Memphis Blues. The grand boulevard became the inspiration for James Baldwin's fifth novel If Beale Street Could Talk. SHOW NOTES
In this episode, we happily introduce Sasha Lunginbuhl.
Meet our contributors.
Listen to the entire series - TRUTH QUEST: Exploring the History of Race in America - in their own words.
Become a Patron - Click on the link to learn how you can become a Patron of the show. Thank you!
The Podcast Official Site: TheBeachedWhiteMale.com
Our exploration of the history of race in America takes us to Montgomery, Alabama. Harvard Attorney Bryan Stevenson opened the offices of the Equal Justice Initiative in the city where Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a public bus and where a young Dr. Martin Luther King became pastor of Dexter Street Baptist Church. The best-selling book which became a full-length feature film, JUST MERCY, tells the story of Bryan's work uncovering the incarceration of innocent victims and exposing the racial inequities of the Criminal Justice System. The Legacy Museum takes our contributors through the history of Slavery to Segregation to Incarceration to Lynching, highlighting the real resistance and the champions of the Civil Rights Movement. The Peace and Justice Memorial is designed to acknowledge and honor more than 4,000 documented lynchings that took place in some 800 counties in the United States. This episode is a moving account as our team processed, engaged, and learned, sharing their personal responses. SHOW NOTES
Meet our contributors.
Listen to the entire series - TRUTH QUEST: Exploring the History of Race in America - in their own words.
Become a Patron - Click on the link to learn how you can become a Patron of the show. Thank you!
The Podcast Official Site: TheBeachedWhiteMale.com
Ken invites John Williams back to the podcast, this time to talk about the summer series, TRUTH QUEST. John and Ken review the origins of the Civil Rights (C.R.) Tour of the South, and John's journey from his law practice to his first C.R. Tour. His experience became a catalyst for leaving his law practice behind. A vision was born to introduce others to the history of race in America - to educate, inspire and transform. The Center has grown exponentially, influencing not only Fellowship Monrovia but churches, non-profits, and individuals across the nation by means of the tours, workshops, Table Talks, and curriculum development. In this conversation, John reflects on his personal meeting with the late Civil Rights icon and Congressman, John Lewis. John Williams has been in "Good Trouble" ever since, along with Ken. SHOW NOTES
Meet our contributors.
Listen to the entire series - TRUTH QUEST: Exploring the History of Race in America - in their own words.
Become a Patron - Click on the link to learn how you can become a Patron of the show. Thank you!
The Podcast Official Site: TheBeachedWhiteMale.com
In this final episode of the summer series TRUTH QUEST, our travelers make their way to Selma and the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In March of 1965, civil rights protesters were met by a lineup of armed police (many on horseback) with attack dogs and billy clubs who ordered them to turn back. When the marchers refused, they were brutally attacked on a day that became known as Bloody Sunday. SNCC Director John Lewis (later Congressman) was viciously beaten and nearly died that day. We take a ceremonial walk across that bridge. We proceed to Birmingham, known in the 50s and 60s as "Bombingham," where Martin Luther King (along with Ralph Abernathy and Fred Shuttlesworth) were imprisoned in 1963 for their civil disobedience. We hear a reading of King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail (Osahon Obazuaye). Several months after King wrote his letter, a bomb exploded on a Sunday morning as the congregation gathered for worship in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls. A fifth, Sarah Collins, lost her sister and best friends but survived the blast. All these years later, she met with our group in the memorial park across from the church and shared her story. Ken wraps the series with some reflections, from several fellow travelers and then some concluding reflections of his own. SHOW NOTES
Listen to the entire series - TRUTH QUEST: Exploring the History of Race in America - in their own words.
Become a Patron - Click on the link to learn how you can become a Patron of the show. Thank you!
The Podcast Official Site: TheBeachedWhiteMale.com
Day 1: Friday June 10 New Orleans
Day 2: Saturday June 11 New Orleans, LA
Day 3: Sunday June 12 New Orleans, LA to Jackson, MS
Day 4: Monday June 13 Jackson, MS to Memphis, TN
Day 5: Tuesday June 14 Memphis, TN
Day 6: Wednesday June 15 Montgomery, AL
Day 7: Thursday June 16 Montgomery to Selma to Birmingham
Day 8: Friday June 17 Birmingham, AL
Day 9: Saturday June 18 Birmingham, AL
More Pending
