As a first generation convert to the church in a very diverse ward, I never really thought about what it meant to be black in the church until High School when a teacher found out that I was LDS through word of mouth and proceeded to tell all of my other teacher. I was eventually asked by each of them why I joined the church and if I knew the history of black people and the church. When others questioned me so frequently, it made me question why I’ve never questioned it. I knew the church had a bit of a dark past but I wanted to also know about the good. So I started to wonder if people who were similar to me at all did anything noteworthy within the organizing or history of the church. I wanted to know the history of people like me in the church. I wanted to feel included. I started to do research and found that there are tons of unsung faithful members of this church that happen to be people of color.
And I think their stories should be told.
But how do I present and share this research in an informative yet fun and entertaining manner? Well I did even more research on different media channels, compiled some interesting findings, and I decided for Black History month this year, I’m going to create and host a podcast!
My podcast will serve as a reminder. A reminder that there is more to history than the same few front-line stories we hear. With a little deep diving and hard research, we can educate each other of those unsung heroes or contributors with essential roles that we don’t learn much about otherwise. This podcast is a deep dive into the history of African Americans in the LDS church.
Unfortunately, shortly after uploading the third episode, the Soundcloud was bombarded with hateful comments, threats, and racial slurs. I moved blocked and reported them several times but they just kept making new accounts and harassing me so I turned the comments off. After my inbox and personal accounts were being attacked so consistently, I decided to record my project progress and transfer it elsewhere. Idecided to move them to Anchor which is exclusively for hosting podcasts.
One of my focuses was to build the brand of “Of African Descent”. That’s why there are three long episodes but they each performed so well. My dream is to do this podcast with even more episodes every Black History Month with new people and research each time!
Visit my main site at https://anchor.fm/of-african-descent to give it a listen!
I promoted the first episode almost everywhere! On all major and non-major social media platforms . With the help of the verbal advertising (at every social gathering) and several surveys before the show was released, our viewers waited in anticipation!
Our Second episode didn’t do so well. I received a ton of negative responses and feedback concerning us not having diverse enough hosts (aka: “there should be more white representation! We are constantly being forced out of the media!“).
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