Listen to Rosia’s Story
Early morning community church service at First Baptist Church. Folks gathered to pray for and bless the community leaders and activists who were planning to be on the frontline.
“This is what our community looks like!”
August 12, 2017 at 7:18 AM
“I was standing in the back. So as I'm standing in the back, I'm not even paying attention to what's going on in my surroundings because I know I'm praying for myself as well as I'm praying for others. And I just started feeling hands touching me.”
- Rosia Parker
Interview Transcript
Rosia Parker
My name is Rosia Parker, and this picture that we're looking at is amazing. It originally started from the Friday night we got locked in a church, as they had the tiki torches. So it prepared me for the next day because we kind of knew what was to come. And me being a spiritual as I am and having a relationship with God, I already knew that day I wasn't supposed to came home. So we had a church service, 6:00 in the morning. It was a sunrise service for the people that was going to be out on the front line August 12th and just community members coming in and want to show their support. I mean, we had a amazing service. Cornel West, he really showed us as activists and as a people, what it was that we need to do to stand up and fight for ourselves that particular day.
Toward the end, Pastor had asked for the activists and the people that was going to be on the front line to come to the front of the church to have prayer. I was standing in the back. So as I'm standing in the back, I'm not even paying attention to what's going on in my surroundings because I know I'm praying for myself as well as I'm praying for others. And I just started feeling hands touching me. So as we're in the church and, you know, praying and praying and praying, them hands was getting stronger and stronger and stronger.
We had—myself and Katrina Turner–had members that pushed us out the way that day. If it wasn't for them pushing us into that wall, what they were laying hands on me for, I wouldn't have been able to come out of that without being hit that day. So to me, that represented angels that was going to be there for me when I had a time of need.
But when I look back on that picture, it just—my spirit, it just resonates in my spirit because it was so many different spirits in there praying for the same thing: the safety of our community and be sanctioned all as one in unity as what was going to take place. So that picture, it just does something to me and I will forever have goose bumps every time I see that picture because it lets me know that my community definitely was behind me on that day.
Music credit: Mimmi Bangoura / Where She’ll Go / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com