On Sept. 26 at 7:00pm, Ebenezer Baptist Church will host a screening of Acts of Reparation, winner of the 2025 Best Georgia Feature film award at the Atlanta Film Festival, in the historic sanctuary where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once presided. The film offers a warm and personal approach to the question of how we reckon with the history of slavery in our families, institutions and communities.
Acts of Reparation follows two friends – Selina Lewis Davison, who is Black, and Macky Alston, who is white – as they travel South to their ancestral lands to explore what reparations means to them. Co-director Macky Alston’s ancestor was the first president of Mercer University and an enslaver. The Rev. Adam Daniel Williams, second pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church and grandfather of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was born enslaved in the town where Mercer University was founded – the town where co-director Macky is from.
Join the Ebenezer community for a powerful weekend of truth-telling, remembrance, and healing. The free screening will be followed by a live conversation with co-directors Selina Lewis Davidson and Macky Alston, moderated by Melinda Weekes-Laidlow, Impact Producer and CEO of Beautiful Ventures.
The following day, Saturday, September 27 from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, community members are invited to participate in Pink House Pop Up: FAMILY HISTORY DAY, held at the Ebenezer Baptist Church fellowship hall. This immersive, all-day, free event provides space and tools for people to explore ancestral research, preservation, and the power of storytelling in the context of healing and historical repair.
In a time when teaching Black history in the public education system has become increasingly controversial, these workshops are designed to help ensure that families are equipped to find their ancestors, record oral histories of their elders, and preserve critical records in their possession for their own benefit and for generations to come. White community members are encouraged to learn how they too can support the research of Black families, for often it is in the archives of white families that Black genealogists can discover records of lost ancestors.
