June Cross, producer and director (Blackside Inc. and The Faith Project, Inc., 2003). This film tells the story of Henry McNeil, founder of the Southern AME church. McNeil embodies the fusion of politics and the sacred that informed much of black religion in the United States through much of the l9th century: the Civil War, Reconstruction, the creation of a separate black church, the back-to-Africa movement, feminism, and the rise of a distinct African American aesthetic of music and spirituality. Producer and director June Cross (Columbia Graduate School of Journalism), who has received two Emmy Awards for documentary film making, will introduce the film and lead a discussion afterward.