Cheryl McKissack Daniel is the latest in a 200+ year old legacy of Black architects, engineers, construction workers and designers who have literally built some of the most iconic structures in America. UF contributor Maina Mwaura sat down with her to talk about her book The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, chronicling her family’s history and heritage of being black builders in the United States and beyond.
This Black History Month, uncover the powerful parallel between Joseph in Genesis and Africans in America.
The Joseph prophecy is a powerful resource that traces the reflections and connections between the life of Joseph in Egypt with the 400-year African American experience. The Joseph Prophecy is a transformative multimedia teaching series that uncovers how suffering, resilience, and divine purpose shaped a people prepared for impact. This powerful resource from UMI explores the striking link between Joseph’s story and the African American journey, how trauma, endurance, and faith shaped a resilient people, our call to rebuild families, churches, and communities, and our role in the “corporate Joseph” God is preparing today.
You can access this incredible resource for free now through UrbanFaith. The program is available here.
The program was featured this month with Lakita Wright on the CACE podcast below!
Former US Ambassador Andrew Young is one the most iconic leaders of the 20th century. He was leading by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s side during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-1960s, first African American mayor of Atlanta, GA, first African American US Ambassador to the United Nations, and responsible for mentoring generations of leaders in the church, public, square, and beyond. He is also an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ who pastored for decades. Hear his thoughts on Dr. King’s historic March on Washington during its 60th anniversary and learn about Dr. King’s legacy through the Share the Dream project from UMI, HarperCollins Christian Publishing, and the K.I.N.G. Movement which has been widely shared since its release.
Sarah’s Oil is a true black history story of fame and fortune. Sarah Rector was a young Black girl with tremendous faith who made a fortune becoming the youngest black millionaire in segregated America. Her story is important history that was rarely told until now, and thanks to a committed group of creators, her story is now being told in movie theaters across the country. UrbanFaith sat down with one of the producers of the film Sarah’s Oil, Derrick Williams, to talk about the film’s impact and message of faith and fortune. The film is now playing in theaters everywhere and it is important for us to support and share our history!
More about the film is below.
SARAH’S OIL is a biographical drama inspired by Tonya Bolden’s 2014 book Searching for Sarah Rector: The Richest Black Girl in America. It tells the extraordinary true story of Sarah Rector, a girl born in the 1900s in Oklahoma Indian Territory, who believed she had oil beneath her inherited land—and was proven right, setting off a battle for ownership and legacy. But Sarah’s story is more than one of wealth: it’s about courage, community, and a fierce belief in her own worth in the face of a society determined to overlook her.
“I think the thing that so appealed about this story is that she is a child,” says writer Betsy Nowrasteh on how the story is framed. This is intrinsically Sarah’s story. “She brings that child’s energy, that child’s hope, and that uncorrupted child’s vision of things. She isn’t cynical, she isn’t skeptical. She just has a clarity of vision that adults lose.”
Directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh (The Stoning of Soraya M., The Young Messiah) and co-written with Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, the film assembles a world-class team both behind and in front of the camera. The ensemble cast stars Zachary Levi, Sonequa Martin-Green, Garret Dillahunt, and Bridget Regan, and introduces Naya Desir-Johnson as Sarah Rector. SARAH’S OIL was shot on location in Oklahoma during Summer 2024, with key scenes filmed at historic sites in Okmulgee and Bristow, grounding the narrative in the land and legacy that shaped Sarah’s life.
Sarah’s living descendants have been integral to the development of the film and deep supporters of SARAH’S OIL.
Diane Euston, a family historian who has long documented Sarah’s place in local history, delivered a poignant interview connecting personal legacy with public record. She beautifully summarized Sarah’s spirit by saying: “This movie does such a great job of showing how the story really is about not giving up – and when somebody says no, you go find someone that’s going to say yes. Sarah did not accept ‘no’ in her life. She found a way… she always found a way.”
This film is not just a period drama. It is a powerful rendering of undertold history and a reclaiming of the past — a film powered by the legacy of Sarah Rector, the passion of her descendants, and the joint vision of Amazon MGM Studios, Kingdom Story Company, and Wonder Project.
Coming to theaters November 7, 2025, SARAH’S OIL reminds us that when the world says no, faith finds another way.
“The people who I want to see it the most are little Black girls all over the world,” says Naya, who dazzles in her breakout role. “When they see this, they might be like, ‘Wow, maybe I can do—’ like, if they have a dream in mind, they’ll be like, ‘I can do this too.’”
These are excerpts from an interview transcribed and edited for clarity and length from Jamaal Bernard’s Offscript Podcast submitted by UF contributor Maina Mwaura. Jamaal interviews acclaimed actor Courtney B. Vance about his new audible reading of W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 by David Levering-Lewis now available on audible. The full interview can be watched or listened to anywhere you find podcasts.
Jamaal Bernard
I’m so excited I’m here. A new episode of Offscript with a special guest, a friend, a friend for years. You see me grow up and Courtney B. Vance. You’re doing a piece for an amazing man, a man who is such a great individual, great inspiration, a great legacy within the community of people of color. And I love this because we have the young individuals, the further I think we get away from certain time points and period in history, the least amount of effect it has on generations, right? And what you’re doing here with this project is an amazing, amazing thing. So thank you so much for that, for my kids’ kids. Tell me a little bit about this project. –
Courtney B. Vance
You know, you talk about what we, you know, the further away you get from, you know, I’m a history buff, I love big biographies. And I didn’t know anything about W.E.B. Du Bois. If you go in black people’s homes, you know, post 1963, up to, you know, 2000 or so, they have a picture of Jesus and a picture of MLK on the wall. Prior to ’63, that was Jesus and W.E.B. Du Bois. That’s how big he was. And I didn’t know that. [It’s amazing] how quickly and how easily we forget and erase people. When he died in Ghana, the president of Ghana gave him a state funeral, on the same day that MLK was delivering his I’ve a Dream speech. The [most prominent] man pre MLK was leaving and MLK was ascending. And they were both at [living] at the same time. They were leaving and ascending at the same time. And for us not to know who he was, that’s how things can repeat. That’s how we lose a sense of who we are, because we don’t continually revisit. We say never forget. And in the information age, we say that and it’s scary. And then that’s why I love history.
Jamaal Bernard
So, [you read] this story, and then putting it on audible, genius idea, right? God used you, inspired you to act. How does your faith, you know, help you navigate the arena? Because you’re an actor, right? You are on big screen, you’re on the stage, now you’re doing audio books and whatnot, and this probably won’t be your last audio book. So how does your faith help you navigate this arena?
Courtney B. Vance
It’s all about my faith. It’s all about our faith. That allows me to stay calm when I don’t know what’s next or what’s happening, or is this the right choice to make? Is this the right timing? Is the timing right to actually ask, can we go in this direction? I don’t panic. As when the disciples were rowing across the, and they were on the one side, and Jesus said, you know, I’ll see you on the other side. He just didn’t tell them that they were gonna go into the storm. But if he says, I’ll see you on the other side, you know that despite the storm, you’re gonna get to the other side. Storms of life happen to all of us. We’re in a storm now, but we will get to the other side of it. Just like, and that’s why I read biographies to actually see how people dealt with the storms in their lives.
Jamaal Bernard
I was gonna ask, can you correlate your experience with something that you, with this project, with W.E.B. Du Bois, and the storm that he’s going through?
Courtney B. Vance
The storm he went through was…he was born a generation removed from slavery. And people at the time were, white and black, were figuring out, is it W.E.B. Du Bois’ way, or is it Booker T. Washington’s way? You know, which is the agrarian, do the trades, and it’s a combination. But white folks at that time were, scared. ‘Cause bottom line, it’s all about the vote. We don’t wanna educate them too much so that they start to come into our areas and impact our lives in terms of making sure that white folks always have what they need, and that they don’t have to answer to black people. So, [they] don’t want them to be engaged, but [they] don’t want to seem like we’re trying to keep them down. So, they were, as our director Christina said, they were figuring it out as they went along. The country was trying to figure out what direction it’s going. It’s fresh out of the Civil War, [W.E.B.] came into his own, into college. [It’s around] 1885, that was a generation removed from the Civil War. So, [white Americans are] trying to get there, but are [they] really helping black people? Are you just helping yourself? Are you only giving money, these rich philanthropists to causes that keep black people down? Or are you giving them to causes that help bring black folks into the mainstream? That was the dilemma.
In the nineteenth century, many American communities and cities celebrated Independence Day with a ceremonial reading of the Declaration of Independence, which was usually followed by an oral address or speech dedicated to the celebration of independence and the heritage of the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers. On July 5, 1852, the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, New York, invited the Black abolitionist and civil rights leader Frederick Douglass to be the keynote speaker for their Independence Day celebration. The Fourth of July Speech, scheduled for Rochester’s Corinthian Hall, attracted an audience of 600. The meeting opened with a prayer and was followed by a reading of the Declaration of Independence. When Douglass finally came to the platform to deliver his speech, the event took a jarring turn. Douglass told his audience, “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” And he asked them, “Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?”
Within Douglass’ now-legendary address is what historian Philip S. Foner has called “probably the most moving passage in all of Douglass’ speeches.”
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
On this and every July 4th, Americans might do well to re-read and reflect on Douglass’ famous message. It challenges us to move beyond the biases and blind spots of our own cultural privileges and consider those around us for whom, as Langston Hughes said, “America has never been America.”
Read Douglass’ complete speech here, and watch actor Danny Glover recite an excerpt from the address below.