From Lynching Histories to Shared Memorials: Dr. Julia Robinson Moore on Racial Healing in Charlotte

Описание: What happens when you discover your church sits beside an enslaved burial ground? That the descendants of those enslaved people still live just blocks away?

In this episode of Third Things First, Suzanne Ross talks with Rev. Dr. Julia Robinson Moore about her courageous work telling the truth about slavery, lynching, and racial violence, while building a shared future rooted in peace and reconciliation.

Dr. Moore, an ordained Presbyterian pastor and associate professor of religion at UNC Charlotte, shares how a childhood encounter with the Ku Klux Klan and later scholarly work on lynching led her into hands-on peacebuilding in Charlotte, North Carolina. She explains how her work with Preserving Sacred Spaces helps Black and White descendants come together around segregated and often unmarked burial grounds on former plantations and church properties.

You’ll hear how her team uses neuroscience, spiritual practices like the Immanuel approach, and community-based design to help people build the emotional capacity to hold hard conversations, stay relational, and collaborate on memorials that “mark the unmarked.” Julia also describes a current project at Providence Presbyterian Church and Matthews-Murkland Presbyterian Church, where descendants are raising funds to complete a powerful memorial honoring graves that have been neglected for generations.​

If you’re wondering how to confront a painful history without getting stuck in rivalry, shame, or despair, this conversation offers concrete practices, stories of hope, and a powerful “third thing”: sacred ground that calls divided communities back together.

👉 Learn more and support Julia’s work: https://www.mooregraceministries.com
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💡 Discover more about mimetic theory, and how it shapes Julia’s work: https://www.ravenfoundation.org/rene-...

0:00 Julia’s call to speak about segregated burial grounds
4:59 Childhood encounter with the Klan
7:57 How mimetic theory explains and interrupts racial violence
9:20 Why unfinished slavery conversations haunt every generation
13:17 Discovering segregated burial grounds in Charlotte churches
15:30 Neuroscience, the right brain, and the Immanuel approach
19:15 How neglected gravesites call descendants back together
21:53 Stories of homes built in the middle of enslaved cemeteries
24:03 Prayer, joy, and memories of gratitude as daily practice
26:42 How to support the Charlotte Seven project

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