DETROIT – The third annual Gospel & Soul event, sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 17. This year's event, which will once again be co-chaired and co-hosted by Michelle Brown and Curtis Lipscomb, carries with it the subtitle A Motown Celebration.
"Detroit exports more gospel artists," said Brown, who is co-chair HRC's national diversity committee and a member of its board of governors. "I mean, gospel is a part of the Motown experience. Many of your great gospel artists came from Michigan. So Motown is not just R&B. It's about gospel, too. So to show that we're unique, and the uniqueness of Detroit, we threw in the subtitle A Motown Celebration."
The Gospel & Soul events were started by HRC about seven years ago. Each year, celebrations take place in cities such as Atlanta and Raleigh, North Carolina. Since its inception two years ago, Detroit's event has quickly established itself as one of the largest. The inaugural event drew 300 people and last year's about 175.
"Ours has been so successful – even though we're one of the newer kids on the block – that HRC is going to videotape ours," said Brown. "One of the things that Gospel & Soul is supposed to be is not just black gospel. Last year we had a lot of straight performers. This year we have white performers, black performers and we have a choir from a straight church. That's what Gospel & Soul is really supposed to be about and we have pushed toward that and accomplished it."
Performing at this year's event will be Delphine Abraham, One Voice Choir, Emily Daniels, the Full Truth Praise Team, Free Indeed Church Choir, Curtis Crowell, Ortheia Barnes and others.
This year's keynote speaker will be Brenda Warren, the mother of Arthur "J.R." Warren, Jr., who was brutally beaten to death in West Virginia in 2000. Twenty-six at the time of his death, Warren, who was openly gay, is believed to have had a sexual relationship with at least one of the two longtime acquaintances that killed him, allegedly because they feared he would reveal such. After killing him, the duo, 17-year-old cousins, dumped his body on a gravel road and ran over it several times with their car, attempting to disguise the crime as a hit and run.
"Part of her message talks about what happened in her straight community with her son," said Brown. "Her church didn't step forward, and also her son's story didn't get publicized like Matthew Shepard's and it was equally as horrible."
Warren was black, while Shepard was white, a fact many say makes it much harder to garner press attention.
"I've met her personally and I found her really inspirational," Brown said. "To go through such a tragic event … the strength this woman has. What's she's doing is really in honor of her son, to pull people together. She's become really a personal hero of mine."
Third annual Gospel & Soul ready to roll
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