Julia Robinson Moore is an associate professor of African American Religion in the Department of Religious Studies and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Africana Studies & History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is also the principal director of the Preserving Sacred Spaces Initiative at UNC Charlotte, which conducts architectural, genealogical and historical research for the memorialization of slave cemeteries throughout Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.
It is this background that will inform her presentation for the African American Heritage House Lecture Series at 3:30 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy. Each week, the AAHH lecturer responds to either the week’s theme of the Chautauqua Lecture Series or Interfaith Lecture Series — in this case, the afternoon’s exploration of “Sin and Redemption: Practices and Possibilities for Reconciliation.”
Moore earned her Ph.D. from Michigan State University, and is an ordained Presbyterian minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) and Minister-At-Large within the Presbytery of Charlotte. The initiative she founded at UNC Charlotte facilitates student learning through religious literacy, architectural history, historical research, and architectural design of unmarked cemeteries. This work has been documented in “Charlotte Seven,” produced by Cowboy Collective and directed by Billy Price.
The movie, which premiered in February at the Justice Film Festival, was screened this week in a joint program from AAHH and the Everett Jewish Life Center at Chautauqua; filmed over the course of four years, “Charlotte Seven” explores the rediscovery of long-overlooked African American history in Charlotte, particularly the hidden legacies of Black churches and burial grounds displaced by urban development.
Trained as a historian, Moore’s research interests include American religious history, mimetic theory, historic preservation, memorialization, and the history of Presbyterianism in the city of Charlotte. Currently, she’s at work on a book investigating the complexities of Black and white race relations in the New South through the sacred context of the Presbyterian Church. Her first book, Race, Religion, and the Pulpit: The Life of Reverend Robert L. Bradby and the Making of Urban Detroit, was published in 2015 and republished in paperback in 2024. Race, Religion, and the Pulpit explores the history of the first Black Baptist Church in Detroit and its partnership with influential figures like Henry Ford and Clarence Darrow during the Great Migration.
