REVIEWS
“Carter’s incisive and sensitively rendered ethnography is a necessary intervention in scholarship concerned with violence and Black communities. Her careful attention to the details of living remind us that relationships and matters of the spirit often exceed the everyday and spectacular forms of trauma often associated with Black life.”
— Aimee Meredith Cox, Yale University
“Profoundly moving and eloquently written, Prayers for the People is a major contribution to the anthropology of urban religion. It is also essential reading for understanding the deepest grounds of despair and hope in contemporary American society.”
— Robert A. Orsi, Northwestern University
“With captivating prose, Carter has written an excellent ethnographic and historical study of religion, love, death, and meaning making among a community plagued by violence in New Orleans. Rich in history and social context, Prayers for the People provides increased depth and complexity to the current literature on African American religion.”
— Marla Frederick, Harvard University
"This thoughtful, engaging, and accessible study examines the activities of African Americans in New Orleans as they attempt to memorialize young black males who were victims of homicide. . . . Projecting a positive, hopeful vision of urban community life and struggle, this volume is a major contribution to the study of urban religion. . . . Highly recommended."
— Choice
"Prayers for the People, while remaining within traditional definitions of US American religions scholarship, centers the work of Black religious women and situates their prayers, interventions, and theological interpretations as work—an important contribution. This work, the work of Black women in life and in death, remains essential in our current moment. Thus, in confronting death and grief in New Orleans, Prayers for the People ultimately offers hope. If we can find the strength and faith to find ourselves 'there with the dead' in a mystical beloved community, we might yet 'chart a generative path through death into new and expansive ways of being, relating, and dwelling.'"
— American Religion
"In terms of charting historical change, both in broad strokes and in specific moments, Rebecca Carter’s book, Prayers for the People, is remarkably effective. More broadly, the book provides equally compelling, thorough, and insightful accounts of multiple institutions and cultural phenomena: it is as remarkable an ethnography of the role of religion in the reimagining of self in New Orleans as it is a study of urban violence. This is anthropology at its best: beautifully written, surprising, deeply informative, and intellectually provocative. It is also quite adventurous scholarship."
— American Anthropologist
"Rebecca Louise Carter’s stunning urban ethnography Prayers for the People: Homicide and Humanity in the Crescent City honors Black grief, love, and the spiritual-healing work of Black mothers. Based on two years of fieldwork in post–Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, Prayers for the People examines how Black residents navigate a city with one of the highest per capita homicide rates in the United States, disproportionately impacting young Black men and the Black community. . . . The ethnography’s accessible language and insistence on a dynamic conceptualization of Black urban life and agency will benefit students of urban studies and anthropology, as well as organizers and activists seeking to connect to ongoing social justice work in communities of faith. In the persistent struggle for Black liberation, Prayers for the People illuminates expressions and practices of Black love and worthiness, making visible possibilities for sustainable Black futures."
— Transforming Anthropology
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: The Crescent City
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226635835.003.0001
[grief;space of death;poor black neighborhoods;crescent city;failures of fieldwork;black women;African American religious ideal;restorative kinship]
The introduction begins with the notion of “grieving well,” described by a group of African American women in New Orleans who gather in a support group for those who have lost loved ones to violence. A central topic of inquiry for the book, the reconfigurations of grief are explored in particular through the experience and knowledge of Black women. Situating the inquiry more broadly within the space of persistent violence and death, the introduction describes the larger social, political, and theoretical context, from the foundations of Black love and value in past and present assertions of Black humanity to the recasting of poor Black neighborhoods as the generative “crescent city.” This includes discussion of the space of death and transformation, the nature of religious experience, the centering of Black women’s practices of restorative kinship, and the forms of an African American religious ideal attuned to the conditions of present and future time. The introduction describes the author’s entrée into the field and methods of research, highlighting in particular the failures of fieldwork in precarious places and the processes of “good grief” that are embedded in the research as well as its findings.
Clouds
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226635835.003.0002
[spiritual message;black women;support group;clouds;recovery;transformation;foreboding;strength;dark]
Each of the three main sections of the book is anchored by a short social and spiritual “message,” an ethnographic scene that foregrounds the experiences of Black women and identifies the central characters who guide and develop the text. This message on clouds introduces Danielle, a member of Liberty Street Baptist Church, who founded the support group for women who have lost children to violence. Describing an interaction between Danielle and her grandson, who sat together on the front porch looking out at the cloudy sky and imagining the boy’s deceased father, the message centers on a religious text about clouds that became a central reading at the support group. It moves from the dark and foreboding nature of clouds, which also characterized Danielle’s life and the life and death of her son, to the recovery, transformation, and strength that the clouds also promised and to which Danielle and the women of the group aspired.
1. The Black Urban Delta
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226635835.003.0003
[black urban delta;history;social geography;vulnerability;structural violence;resistance;resilience;recovery]
This chapter introduces a key group of individuals whose experience and knowledge frames and develops the text. The chapter situates this group by taking an historical and social-geographic approach to bring the “Black urban delta” into view, revealing the evolution of vulnerability for people of African descent in New Orleans from the colonial period forward. It makes clear the connection between the development of the urban delta and the social problems that disproportionately affect Black people, while shedding light on the various forms of resistance, resilience, and recovery that have simultaneously emerged as Black people have fought to survive and thrive in a society in which they have never been fully valued. The chapter is anchored by the author’s own navigation of the city from the start of the research through key sites, events, and encounters. Such detail forms an essential backdrop for understanding the conditions that research participants confronted, situating lives and locations as embedded within, though not confined by, local histories of oppression and overlapped conditions of structural and social violence.
2. “Twelve Murders and Two Victims?”: Asserting Black Social and Spiritual Value
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226635835.003.0004
[violence;homicide;anti-violence ministries;Catholic;Episcopal;Vodou;black Baptist church;Hurricane Katrina]
This chapter focuses on the problem of violence, detailing its causes, dimensions, and overall impact. Rather than confining violence to the African American community, the chapter discusses how violence has been historically measured as well as how scholars have worked to unpack violence as a category and how the category continues to be reified. The chapter then examines local responses, focusing on the work of four groups representing Catholic, Episcopal, Vodou, and Baptist traditions, across key moments and critical events. These include the rise of anti-violence ministries following a surge in homicide rates during the 1990s, competing visions for a “new” New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and a series of brutal murders in New Orleans in late 2006 and early 2007, which triggered an anti-violence march on City Hall. While the Black Baptist church becomes a primary site for this research in the book, this chapter paves the way by describing the larger social and religious context that framed the author’s initial navigation of the Crescent City.
Walk Out There on Faith
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226635835.003.0005
[life-in-death;mourning;black women;mothers;Baptist;testimony;faith;spiritual journey;care;somebody]
The ethnographic scene that begins the second part of the book focuses on the life-in-death story of Candace, who narrates the life and tragic death of her son Corey. An African American woman, mother, and Baptist, Candace grounds her testimony in her own family history and faith, describing in detail her upbringing, her parenting of Corey, his death, and her painful and continued mourning. However, the message also focuses on a spiritual journey, necessary for survival, that for Candace is anchored by a renewed faith in God and a dedication to the religious and social work of the church. The message thus concludes with descriptions of Candace’s activism and outreach, particularly with young people, which she grounds by sharing her own story and grief, by caring, by encouraging those she encounters to be “somebody,” and by adhering to the belief that if she can turn just one person around then she is doing her part.
3. Somebodies on the Battlefield for the Lord
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226635835.003.0006
[African American religious ideal;battlefield for the Lord;beloved community;nonviolence;black humanity;black social Christianity;somebodies]
This chapter focuses on a religious rally organized by Liberty Street Baptist Church as a lens through which to examine the anti-violence theology, teachings, and practices of the Black Protestant Church. To shed light on an African American religious ideal attuned to the conditions of present day, the chapter traces the religious journey that leads participants to “the battlefield for the Lord,” the convergence of “they” and “somebody” upon it, and the creation of a beloved community based on nonviolence, inscribed in place, and grounded in the love and care of self and other. While these tenets are traced to the history and lingering influence of a Black social Christianity, this chapter examines them as an emergent blueprint for urban being still founded on a sacred Black humanity and made visible through embodied practice.
4. THOU SHALT NOT KILL: Commanding Peace in Particular Places
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226635835.003.0007
[African American religious ideal;ministry;black social and spiritual value;vigils;ceasefire;love;recovery]
This chapter describes the history and mission of Liberty Street Baptist Church, particularly under the leadership of “Pastor Samuel” from 1988-2013. The chapter traces the emergence of an African American religious ideal through three primary ministries that worked to end violence and assert Black social and spiritual value: the THOU SHALT NOT KILL ministry, developed in the mid-1990s and focused on the religious and moral incorrectness of violence; The ENOUGH ministry, developed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as a coalition-based response to violent conditions via public demonstrations, vigils, and other activities; and The Yes We Care! ministry, launched in the spring of 2009 on the heels of Barack Obama’s first presidential victory, which emphasized the conditions of Black love and value and featured a ceasefire initiative that reflected a recovery stalled by the continuation of violence yet inspired by the possibilities of national Black leadership. The chapter explores both the inward and outward focus of this work, identifying a frequently entangled relationship between structural racism and violence, the localized dimensions of violence and death, and the individual and collective commitments necessary for the recovery of self and community.
Seeing
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226635835.003.0008
[seeing;raising the dead;support group;ritual;balloon release;letting go;relatedness;value]
The message that opens the final section of the book introduces the ways in which residents, Black women in particular, make a social world out of death itself by socially, spiritually, and symbolically “raising” the dead. This is an ethnographic description of a specific ritual, a balloon release in honor of the deceased, performed at the close of the religious support group meetings for women suffering because of violence. More broadly, the message focuses on processes of seeing, claiming, and letting go, as the women watch the balloons disappear from view and with their assertion of the relatedness and value of lost loved ones, in this world and the next.
5. Black Mothers at the Center of Death and Transformation
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226635835.003.0009
[black women;testimony;violence;murder;social and physical death;Hurricane Katrina;relatedness;good grief;restorative kinship]
This chapter focuses on the founding, mission, and daily work of the support group at Liberty Street Baptist Church for women who have lost loved ones to violence. Danielle anchors the chapter; her testimony makes clear the persistent conditions of social and physical death found disproportionately within this and other Black communities. Her testimony also reveals, however, her direct experience of death and her response to it, given the murder of her son and the devastation from Hurricane Katrina she also lived through just a few months after. As we learn about her son’s life and death, for example, we learn not only about the violent severing of social and familial bonds but about the work of their restoration. Black women are frequently at the center of these processes, and this chapter centers their visions of a nonviolent and beloved community. The chapter describes how women countered the broader devaluing of their children by developing practices of relatedness that affirmed their relatedness beyond the standard boundaries of place, position, or realm of existence. Danielle’s testimony thus introduces the methods of strength and support – the “good grief” and restorative kinship the women extended from earthly to eternal domains.
6. Restorative Kinship: Birthdays and Death Anniversaries for Children of God
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226635835.003.0010
[grieving mother;reverence;transformation;sorrow;ritual;birthdays;death anniversaries;restorative kinship;continuing bonds;children of God]
This chapter is anchored by the story of a grieving mother beside her son’s grave who finds comfort in the song of a bird. The story makes clear the sense of reverence that women at Liberty Street Baptist Church worked to cultivate, as they sought transformation in the midst of great sorrow. The chapter examines two prominent rituals performed by the women in the support group for those who mourned lost loved ones – the celebration of the birthdays of the deceased and the marking of death anniversaries. It details their essential components including group prayer, testimony, bible study, discussion, and fellowship. While the chapter makes clear the importance of these practices for the safety and care of grieving support group members, it also considers this work as a broader assertion of Black relatedness and social and spiritual value. The chapter thus develops a theory of restorative kinship, which recovers the person symbolically, spiritually, and in practice, through a close relationship with God and through the development of continuing bonds among the living, between the living and the deceased, on earth, and in God’s holy and eternal kingdom.
Conclusion: The Crescent City Illuminated
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226635835.003.0011
[violence;urban being;black lives;social and moral awakening;connective politics;crescent city;inheritance;inclusivity;love;communitas]
The conclusion summarizes key findings, affirming the persistence of vulnerable and violent conditions in Black New Orleans on the one hand but emphasizing the new pathways of urban being the crescent city reveals on the other. Centering the people as the social and moral agents of this inquiry, it considers the impact their knowledge has on how we understand, contend with, and seek to transform the conditions of our time. The chapter also details how local ministries and programs have developed and changed, as well as how the project has been further refined given an increasingly charged national discourse on violence and the value of Black lives. It thus discusses significant events that bring this discourse to the fore, bracketed by the tumultuous shift from the Obama to the Trump presidency, when the writing of the book was completed. The process of social and moral awakening is considered alongside the framing and development of a connective politics, which includes the role of the Black Church as a central conduit through which old and new ideals might be directed and expanded, particularly in conversation with religious and social teachings on inheritance, inclusivity, communitas, and love.
