Slavery to Freedom: An American Odyssey
MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine Annual Dr. William G. Anderson Lecture Series gives the community opportunities to interact with multicultural leaders from education, business, industry, entertainment and government. For 25 years, this series has featured living icons of the American Civil Rights Movement.
About Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou
It sounds so simple when noted activist, theologian, author, documentary filmmaker, and blues/ soul/gospel musician Reverend Osagyefo Sekou says it but it belies the incredible power and thoughtfulness of his work. “Wherever people are catching hell, I try and show up,” he says of his work, which spans from concerts worldwide to in-person organizing in troubled places from Charlottesville, VA to Beirut, Lebanon; New Orleans, LA after Katrina to Ferguson, MO after the death of Michael Brown, Jr, where he traveled to Ferguson in mid-August 2014, directly in the aftermath of Michael Brown Jr.’s killing, on behalf of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (the country’s oldest interfaith peace organization) to organize alongside local and national groups. He was arrested multiple times during the Ferguson Uprising, including for ‘Praying while Black’ outside the Ferguson Police Department. He was found not guilty on federal charges following a sit-in at the Department of Justice.
With the Deep Abiding Love Project, he has helped trained over ten thousand clergy and activists in militant nonviolent civil disobedience throughout the United States. Rev. Sekou was selected by Ebony Magazine’s Power 100, NAACP History Makers (2015), and on the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100–list of creative thinkers.
The musician and pastor explains the source of his commitment, saying, “My understanding of faith requires justice doing and making in the world. Anything less is idolatry.” Based in Seattle, Rev. Sekou pastors Valley and Mountain Fellowship UMC there in addition to his other work as a recording and touring artist. His music is a chief tool of this work. NPR’s Bob Boilen testified that Rev. Sekou delivered one of “the most rousing Tiny Desk performances.”
“When people see me in concert, I pray they come away a little freer,” he attests. Born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in the rural Arkansas delta, he grew up steeped in a unique combination of Arkansas delta blues, Memphis soul, 1970s funk, and gospel that shines through his own music with his Nashville-based band the Freedom Fighters. He remembers, “I was a choir boy who hung out in gambling houses with my uncle. I grew up hearing the blues, soul, funk, and gospel. So my music lives in that liminal space in between sacred and secular.” His live concerts are often likened to gospel revivals and it’s not uncommon to see audiences moved to tears and moved to dance at the same time.
Rev. Sekou holds a BA in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Continental Philosophy and Creative Writing from The New School in New York City, New York and is Phd candidate in Religious Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Rev. Sekou has lectured widely, including at Princeton University, Harvard Divinity School, University of Paris IV - La Sorbonne, and Vanderbilt University. He has served as pastor in Jamaica Plains, Boston, MA; and in Queens, NY. Reverend Sekou has served on the National Political Hip Hop Convention Platform Committee.
