-: We are now at sacred heart St. Mary's Parish
-: I'm, Michael Linden.
Also here, at sacred heart St. Mary parish.
-: Okay. And we can just talk about, you know
if you want to talk about some
of the things in here or I'll just record a little
it doesn't really have to be a lot.
And I'll kind of
-: And we just celebrated our hundred year anniversary.
So we've been in existence here for a hundred years.
It was one of the first African-American Catholic churches
in this area.
-: We, we have a history of, of, of
a priest that have become
of young men that have become priests that have
left the parish, over the years
like for example, her brother, Michael father
Michael Thompson is, is, is a victim general superior
superior general
of the Joseph White priests.
The Joesph White priests served our parents
and my brother was a Joseph White also who originally
from this parish and we had other priests
father E. Ned,
father Dou gal,
father Doheny
We had, we had was our parish burn a lot
of vocations in earlier years.
-: We also had sisters.
And so we have sister Doris Good old Coosa, Holy family
sister in new Orleans Michael's brother,
father Linden
not only was from this parish, as you know
he was an alter boy and stuff
back in the early sixties.
And he now is a professor
at Xavier university in new Orleans
which is one of the
historically black university.
That's St. Catherine Drexel.
-: Wow. That's amazing.
And both of your families grew up in this church, right?
Right. That's true.
-: Actually,
my parents married here
and Michael's parents were their maid of honor and best man.
And Michael's three older brothers
were the alter boys.
-: Wow. So this has been a really important piece
of the community, right?
Yeah. Okay.
Anything else?
Like what, what is this maybe?
What does this church mean to you?
Because you both are so
-: Really for me
it's really my livelihood.
Cause this, I mean, this is, this is who I am.
And for a period of time,
when I moved away
in the early seventies, I left for a while
but there was something that was missing.
And so I told my mother, I said
I don't know what it is, but I'm,
I'm not happy where I am.
And so she said, well, come back home.
So I've been back here in this parish for some years now.
I left like in 77, maybe 76.
Yeah.
-: And I've been here all my life.
And we basically on Sunday, we have the perpetuation of
of our families here because you know,
she's still here.
I'm still here with my family
and she's here with her family.
And the history goes on because we have our elders who are
who are dying away very quickly.
But we have some of them
you you'll get a chance to meet Barb Sunday.
Some of our elders who are still here and
but we are here and we, we have stepped up
to be the elders
right. Parents, you know
-: And actually one of the teachers here actually taught me
in the second grade and she's still here
so, you know
we have a little joke with her about,
you know, I say, Hey teacher
What's going on?
You know, because she, she taught me in a second grade.
And so she's gone from me to my, you know
my siblings that was behind me.
And she's still here, you know?
So people that have the compassion
and dedication for this area kind of like
stayed around.
They may, they may have moved across town,
but like even me
I live not far from where I work, but I travel.
I pass a lot of churches and travel back home
to cause this is considered my roots, you know?
-: Yeah. And I, and I think we'd want to say
that we have a lot of people
who travel every Sunday
you know, they come back,
even though we're decentralized
there are churches in their areas,
but they come back here.
Yeah. This is home.
And I can recall having gone through all the
all the sacraments from communion to confirmation
to my marriage, you know,
right here, right here in this
in this church, we used to have railings, you know
like the old church, but we took
the railings out.
But I'm sure Wanda
likewise went through all of the
all of the ceremonial things right here.
And they still they're much.
I, you know, I can on a Sunday sit here
and just think back when I was an alter server
or when I was at an elector, you know
those things still are very near and dear to me
even though I'm not doing them now,
but my kids have grandkids.
-: And I remember traveling with my grandmother to mass
at four, we got up at four o'clock,
five o'clock mass.
We would come in
to church and it wasn't English,
then it was Latin.
I didn't understand it.
I just sharing with my boss this morning
about how our ancestors
even though it wasn't an English mass
that they could understand it was Latin.
And at that time, the priest back was to them.
They weren't facing the people and stuff.
Those people had so much faith that they understood.
And they, they instilled that really in us is
is I think is why we have continued to,
to be here.
But they had so much faith and understanding,
even though a lot of them couldn't even
read and write, you know
so this is what we need to try to keep
and instill in our children and our grandchildren
is because there is a lot of history of that.
And there's a lot of things that are,
our grandparents and parents and stuff.
And we went through that.
We didn't experience, but they did.
And so for the reason of,
of it being an African-American
church and we couldn't cross over,
we could, we couldn't go
to the white church.
Or if we went there, you,
you had to sit in the back
or you had to give up a seat,
you know, to allow someone
else to sit there because that's, that's the era
that we know they grew up in.
Rather I just heard about it.
I actually experienced it like they did,
but yet still my great aunt and them cook
could cook for them and stuff.
They just couldn't attend the masses.
-: So what do you think about the church now?
And maybe young people's involvement
in the church?
Is it, is it reviving or
you know, are they becoming a part of it
-: Which we're we're we have some young
people trying to keep it going,
but we we've a large number
of our younger people is characteristic
of all churches are dissipating.
You know, the kids getting the kids involved
the where they, the way we were involved,
we had CYO
and we had things like that
to keep the youth involved.
And now it's a struggle to get our youth to come.
And this is one of the great greatest task
that we have is trying to get them to come.