Chicago’s Gospel Living Legends on June 18 Roundtable

The Chicago Gospel Music Heritage Museum announced that it has received a $5,000 grant from the Illinois Humanities Council to host the first-ever “Chicago’s Living Legends of Gospel Roundtable Series.”

Held quarterly beginning in June 2011, Chicago’s Living Legends of Gospel Roundtable Series will be a quarterly cycle of conversations with a group of Chicago-based gospel singers and musicians who rose from humble beginnings to international prominence during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

The first roundtable will be held at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, 45th and Princeton Streets in Chicago.

Inez Andrews of the Caravans (pictured); Reuben Burton of the Victory Travelers; and Civil Rights leader Rev. Dr. Clay Evans, founder of Fellowship M.B. Church will serve as panelists. Gospel radio announcer Effie Rolfe of Inspiration 1390 AM will facilitate the discussion.

Chicago Gospel Music Heritage Museum Founder Rev. Dr. Stanley Keeble said, “Thanks to the Illinois Humanities Council, everyone, and especially young people, will be able to hear from those who were there, who traveled the gospel highway during a time of disenfranchisement and discrimination against African Americans, and who succeeded despite sometimes overwhelming obstacles.”

The roundtables will be videotaped for placement in the Museum’s archives. “I can’t think of a better place than Chicago’s south side, where gospel music was born more than eighty years ago, to hold these historic gatherings,” Rev. Keeble added.

For more information on the Chicago Gospel Music Heritage Museum or the roundtable series, contact Rev. Keeble at 773.870.0224.