Justin R. Lester traces how the Black church drove major cultural shifts from radio through early hip hop, then lost ground during the internet transition around Y2K. He uses stories from Martin Luther King to 1999 Watch Night to show what happened when Black institutions didn't lead the move online.
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We have been the most innovative institution. But you know what happened with the Internet? We the black church, we led the radio movement. As Bishop Brown was talking about. Martin Luther King would get up on the top of this, of a building in Atlanta and he would use the radio to make sure that everybody in Atlanta knew what was going on with the civil rights movement when it came to the. When it came to CDs and hip hop, man, we led that thing. We had them baggy pants, some of y' all Afro. That's why you balled today. Your soul was glowing too much in the 80s, right? We led that. But when it came to the Internet, what do we do? Y' all remember 19 watch night 1999 was up here hooping and hollering. I mean, just on the floor hoping that the world wasn't going to fall apart at midnight. Y' all know that we thought the world was going to fall. Cuz you know what? Al Gore's Internet told us so many lies that the world was going to end at midnight. And what did do at 12:01, 1-1-2000, Black Planet and Facebook.