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A ten-step program for those who see that time won't break race walls.
Only acts will.

Everywhere children go to school, interacting only with their own race. Most people having no friend of another color. Though many want a change, that is still the truth. This program will give concrete tools to deal with the obstacles. It starts by looking into why eleven o'clock on Sunday is still -

 

In 1992, two churches in Oxford, Mississippi, one black and one white, started a process of racial interaction. Filmmaker Kent Moorhead followed the process and saw programs start, have an impact, but then be allowed to die.

The footage he shot led to the film, “The Most Segregated Hour”, winner of the Best Documentary Film Award at the 2005 Crossroads Film Festival.

Scene of white and black congregations discussing racial reconciliation. From "The Most Segregated Hour".

But the film also led to a determination to understand why the attempts didn't prevail. Why did white people make excuses instead of changes? The analysis and soul searching led to the idea, that instead of letting the same obstacles stand in the way time after time, churches and other organizations could take a concrete approach. It led to a ten-step program dealing with things such as people's excuses and looking at what we really mean with forgiveness. This approach has been embraced by the Foundation for the Mid South. Ten steps of honest, no-nonsense language combined with a lot of laughter, as a fresh way of looking into reality.


Kent Moorhead was born and raised in Mississippi. “I used to use those same tired excuses too - 'It's in the past', 'Others were just as bad', and the worst of all, 'It's just going to take time'. But then I realized the cost is too high. I don't want to leave this kind of world to my sons.”

Kent Moorhead provided the inside look, a deep knowledge of the South. He was eight when a race war started in his hometown over James Meredith's integration of the University of Mississippi. He has done extensive documentary work with race and civil rights issues and has interviewed leading Mississippi figures such as James Meredith, Aaron Henry, Victoria Gray, Annie Devine, Bob Moses and William Winter. His wife, Pia Moorhead Törnberg is a Swedish investigative journalist and has a long pedagogic experience with Stockholm University. She was co-author and co-editor on “The Most Segregated Hour”, bringing the outside eyes. “I could see the South frozen in time, giving into the few that benefit from not changing. I did what I do as an investigative journalist in Sweden: I kept asking, 'Why? Why does it make sense to do it that way?'”
Pia Moorhead Törnberg & Kent Moorhead

The program is designed for churches and other institutions that want to engage across the racial barrier. This is not a program for people in denial. It is a program for those who have moved past denial and are ready to engage.

This program will include study guides for both leaders and participants, supplemental materials and an extended DVD, including the film, “The Most Segregated Hour”, along with additional short features, which can be used for discussion.

 

INTERESTED?


Breaking the Cycle is now available for sale in an edition designed for church use. If you are interested, please contact:


Kent Moorhead
Forever Young Productions, LLC
662-513-0108 (business)
662-816-7253 (mobile)
+468 644-7885 (Stockholm)
kmoorh@aol.com (email)

Click to read: "Crossing The Mighty River: Race, Religion and Mississippi" – Article reprinted from Jackson Free Press