[Chatter of conversation and laughter] [Sound of water lapping] [Laughter] NILAH PURNELL: There we go... VIOLA SAMPLE: You want one by yourself?

NILAH: No, uh-uh.

PASTOR TONY JOHNSON: All right, my turn.

NILAH: It's Pastor's time now.

NILAH: I know he's going on the stone, on the water.

He's gonna walk on water one of these days!

PASTOR TONY: I'm gonna walk on it.

NILAH: I said, you're gonna walk on water one of these days.

You might as well get on there.

PASTOR TONY: I don't want to slip....No, I'm good here.

I'm a-good here.

I'm a good here.

NILAH: All right, you ready?

Let's pose.

One more, all right, hold on.

PASTOR TONY: Got it?

NILAH: Yep.

Strike the pose, strike the pose.

[Laughter] NILAH: Hold it!

[More laughter] NILAH: Get back, get back, get back!

PASTOR TONY: You know I'm getting old.

NILAH: All right.

I'll be 58 Thursday.

PASTOR TONY: All is good.

NILAH: I got it, I got it!

[More laughter] NILAH: Walking on the water!

[Laughs] PASTOR TONY: My favorite, my favorite, my favorite... NILAH: My favorite cousin pastor brother!

[Both laugh] NILAH: Thank God for another day.

It's beautiful out.

♪♪ PASTOR TONY: All right.

PASTOR TONY: Let's go.

It is beautiful.

♪♪ BRIAN MARTIN: When you come over, we're just going to go up to the barn.

I put it in my attic in the barn.

PASTOR TONY: And work out?

BRIAN: We're going to see what you can show me.

[Brian laughs] PASTOR TONY: Well we'll See.

I have a six pack underneath this stomach that is raging to get out.

BRIAN: Yeah, me too.

It's just hiding!

PASTOR TONY: I keep it hid.

[Laughs] DAWANA WHITE: The seagulls is gonna come and get their bread for their communion.

PHYLLIS: [off camera] And don't give them too big a piece, you might choke em.

DAWANA: All right, Phyllis.

I think they're getting fish now.

But a seagull, his name is Brian...you didn't even get it Brian.

[Laughs] BRIAN: [Laughs] I'm going to go this way... DAWANA: I'm sorry.

BRIAN: You're not even trying!

DAWANA: There you go.

[Gospel music] PASTOR TONY: People and Native Americans, that if we're in Christ, we're all brothers and sisters.

We've got to learn to love one another.

Because when you look in the mirror, if you want to see Jesus, you are to be in his image.

So we've got to realize that if I look in the mirror, and you look in the mirror, we're all looking at the face of Jesus the Christ.

Can I get an Amen this morning?

[Cars honk in response] PASTOR TONY: To hang up on the cross, died, bleed, and be laid in a tomb.

On the third day, he got up with all power.

You got to learn that only by Christ his Word can we live in this world.

And that he is the author, he is the finisher.

He is the final judge.

We got to realize that it's not the laws that make us right, but when we read the B-I-B-L-E... ♪ [Keyboard plays] ♪ PASTOR TONY: Thank you.

(Voice humming) ♪ [Keyboard plays in background] ♪ PASTOR TONY: I feel it.

Amen.

WOMAN: Lead me.

♪ Lead me Guide me ♪ ♪ Along... the way ♪ ♪ Lord, if you lead me, I cannot stray ♪ WOMAN: Hallelujah, Thank you, God.

♪ Lord... let me walk ♪ [Sounds of birds chirping] ♪♪ LEVIN WHITE: The water, it came over the whole island, from up there by the bridge, all the way down to Wenona, the front of that store down there, you had to wade.

We were going to school out here, you had to wade.

Then we went to school in Dames Quarter, and you had to wade.

Water was everywhere.

Yeah.

Most of it's still underwater when that storm comes up right.

BOYD "DUCKY" WALLACE: Chance, Deals Island, is sinking.

Within years to come, this is going to wash away like Hollands Island did.

Yeah, this is going to wash away, and it's going to be nothing but water after awhile.

It's going to be after my time, because I'm gonna live to be 150.

KATE TULLY: I, um, I don't study exactly the, the um the science of when things will disappear, but um, it doesn't have a lot of time left [chuckles].

PASTOR TONY: It has been times that when we were scheduled to be here at Macedonia, we would have to move it to a different location or we would have to cancel service because the high tide would come in and there was no way that we could get through here; once we even had a storm to come through and it took us approximately three weeks before we could get back here.

CLAUDIA WIGFALL: The other flip of the coin of that is that also because of all the tides, we could get caught not being able to get home.

That was another reason, too.

I mean... JOHN JONES JR: Even as far as, you know the bridge when you're coming in, that little bridge there, little body of water?

Well, years back when you was coming from Princess Anne they had to build that road up, they built that road up like 18 inches 'cause it used to flood all the way across the road and you couldn't get home.

CLAUDIA: That's true.

DR. CHANELLE WHITE ACHEAMFOUR: All of this will be under water when we have a major storm.

So this road to my house, you're pretty much stuck.

You can't go anywhere.

And then all around here, um, the cemetery will be underwater.

The hall grounds will be underwater.

So um, I've seen the water getting higher um, as I've been here over the years.

Um, so I do believe that um... we are having issues with climate change and and Deal Island sinking.

KATE: Sea level rise is about three times higher all along the eastern seaboard of the United States compared to global sea level rise rates.

So the Eastern Shore is even more susceptible to um, sea level rise because we're very, very low lying already.

So we start out as a very very low um, surface elevation.

And then on top of that, we have land subsidence.

And so it's kind of a double whammy.

RAMONIA WHITE: So we really need to find a solution to that.

And I don't know what that might be because you can't stop saltwater if it's rolling in, so I don't know.

CHANELLE: As you can see, we have vaults and because of the high water table, the vaults have to be on top of the ground.

But that saltwater deteriorates those vaults rapidly.

And you can see from the condition of many vaults that most of them need replacing.

KATE: Saltwater intrusion is the landward movement of sea salt.

And it looks like a tree.

You'll see a tree in the East Coast forest.

It looks like it's been burned by fire, but it's actually been burned by salt from the inside out.

But if you're a farmer or you own a beautiful waterfront property, that encroachment of those trees, of that marsh and those- that ghost forest is a sign of trouble.

Just expecting people to give up their homes and let the marsh migrate in is not is not going to be a viable solution.

RAMONIA: The tide here is very bad sometimes.

And like I said, I've had time where I can't get my car through here because the hot water is so high.

So all of that goes into the graveyards and we've had graves actually floating to the surface because of all of the salt and the salt just eats away at them.

So eventually, over time, as it keeps on flooding, they're going to keep on being damaged.

CHANELLE: The seal between the the lid and the base of the vault.

Um that seal breaks.

And if you get enough flooding, those caskets rise up.

And pretty much the vault top came up, the casket came out and it was floating down the road.

[Laughs] It was headed this way.

[Laughs] LEVIN WHITE: I don't know.

I heard about it.

I don't know where I was at?

CHANELLE: You were here.

LEVIN: Was- Was I working?

CHANELLE: That was when Herschel was with us.

LEVIN: I know.

I know that.

CHANELLE: I don't know... LEVIN: I aint never did see them, but I know I heard about it and that that wasn't the first time.

CHANELLE: It was a couple of that time that I remember.

LEVIN: Uh huh.

So yeah, they said it was two.

CLAUDIA: Actually it was very devastating.

But I know for a fact that's not the first time it's ever happened in the graveyard.

But to see my mother disturbed.

That disturbed me and my brother.

But, everything was taken care of.

[Guitar music] JOHN: That wasn't the only time we had graves come up.

They've come up several times.

Different floods and uh, a couple of hurricanes.

Um, it was worse than that.

We had like 11 or 12 caskets that actually came up.

And some caskets came out of the vault.

Well, the vaults came up and the caskets come out.

We had about three or four that came out and they were from here to there.

But we happen to know where each one of them belong.

So we had them put back in.

CHANELLE: Those vault tops do not last um, very long.

So we do have a number of um, graves in the in the um, in the cemetery that needs some serious work.

LEVIN: I've fixed a lot of them myself.

CHANELLE: Over the years we have, um, between my dad and Ike Humphrey, they've um, repaired them or replaced them as as they can or as they could.

But um, still, it's like fighting a losing battle.

KATE: I think the saddest part about this whole phenomenon is that we're drowning.

A lot of our communities are are facing this erosion of their culture and traditions because the land, which of course, we're also tied to in an intimate way, is starting to disappear from underneath our feet.

And as much as we can do to try to preserve those cultures, whether it's watermen, religion, you know, the legacy of farming, that's a very critical part of any decision.

VINCENT LEGGETT: One thing about African Americans on the Chesapeake Bay, we inherited the shoreline.

It was low bottomland, high reeds and high mosquitoes.

But the reason we were there was it was considered undesirable land.

You couldn't grow tobacco on it.

KATE: So when enslaved people were freed, especially in that area, they were pushed out to the ends of those necks far away from the mainland.

And then those are the first communities that are really going under water.

Well it turns out that those are, those are the communities that are primarily, Black communities.

VINCENT: Let's look at it from an economic standpoint.

How can you stay in these communities?

And once they left the farm, left the coastlines, they lost their connection to the land based community.

KATE: It ha- it's already, it's set up that way.

And I don't- I think that you have to, you have to weigh both the cultural loss and then and then also these financial considerations.

And I don't really know as as someone who is not a legislator, I don't know how you, how you really untangle that.

VINCENT: If you pick up any book on the Chesapeake Bay in a public library, college, or university, and just start flipping through the pages, very seldom you won't see any people of color.

When you do run across one, the caption says "crab picker" or "oyster shucker," no other attributes.

You flip the page again, if it's a white, it talks about how many generations they've been in the industry.

It talks about their setbacks, it talks about their successes.

They have names.

So that's a big part of it.

It's one thing- I think the position is, one thing if you want to ignore me.

I think it's more deliberate if you erase me off the boat.

If I was on the boat, leave me on the boat.

CHANELLE: There was a former slave named Arnold Wallace.

Arnold Wallace was a big contributor to making sure this church got to where it is.

He bought his freedom and there is a census record of Arnold Wallace having like $1,000 in savings.

And that was more than even some of the individuals in the white community.

So it's quite amazing what this man did um and, how he contributed to Deal Island, to getting the church where it was.

VINCENT: More importantly, the vanishing shared memory.

We have to capture that shared memory and document it and pass it on so as they say, and least we forget and it's just so easy to forget when the truth tellers are no longer with us.

CHANELLE: Maps from the 1800's show this as the Black church and the hall as the Black school.

So if you do any research when it comes to the um, older maps of Somerset County, that's how you'll see these buildings listed.

In the 1920's and thirties, we had a quite um, impressive community down here and this church was the lifeline for the Black community.

JANICE "PENNY" HUMPHREY: When you're emotionally connected, you don't mind sending your money.

Uh, and that's what kept the church going.

And they went home to be with the Lord.

And that connection did not um, follow to the next generation or the generation after that.

[Organ music with drums] PARISHIONER 1: Good morning.

PARISHIONER 2: Good morning.

How are you baby?

[Machine beeps] VOICE OF MACHINE: Normal temperature.

PARISHIONER 2: Good morning.

PARISHIONER 3: What's up, baby girl?

VOICE OF MACHINE: Normal temperature.

[Chatter continues and machine continues to beep] VOICE OF MACHINE: Normal temperature.

PARISHIONER 2: Good to see you.

PARISHIONER 4: This is the mother of our church.

PARISHIONER 2: Good morning.

PARISHIONER 3: Good morning, Mama Gerty.

You all right baby?

MAMA GERTY: Um-hm.

VOICE OF MACHINE: Normal temperature.

MAMA GERTY: Normal.

Normal.

I'm normal.

PASTOR TONY: Good.

Good.

I had to drive slow, my mom was in front of me [laughs].

PASTOR TONY: I love you.

BRIAN: Good morning.

PASTOR TONY: Hey, Brian.

How are you?

[Gospel choir sings] PASTOR TONY: As I was told, this used to be a thriving community in all three of the, well four of the locations.

In Oriole, Chance, uh, Dames Quarter and Deal Island.

It's hard for me to have the concept that each of these areas was populated with 2 to 500 people at one point.

The congregation has changed.

You know, some of the elder ones have passed, some of the younger ones have grown up and gone to college and different things.

But it was always a loving place.

But I have a hope and a belief on the inside of me that makes that that water can separate when I need some help.

And it says that they crossed over like on dry land because within the Word when you read that text it says that they crossed over and that their wheels never got stuck, that there was dust in the mix, realizing like down here in Dames Quarter and Chance, things don't dry up real quick.

But if you got God on your side he can make the Red Sea become a highway.

But the good thing is, is that when Moses lifted up his hands that they were able to walk through with their horses, their buggies, their chariots and their children, that they were able to reach the other side.

[Penny drumming her hands on railing] PENNY: We are a people of determination, ingenuity, creativeness.

And, when I look at where the African American race comes from, we have no obstacles, no barriers that we can't overcome.

We have a line of preachers.

We have one right now.

Uh, we call him.

He's going to be - don't be mad.

We call him "cowboy."

[Chuckles] But he's Doctor William Wallace.

PASTOR WILLIAM WALLACE: Is racism alive?

Yes, it's doing well.

It's more difficult to discern, but the results are the same.

Um, it's all the same.

And that is to keep all non-white people out of out of power, out of um... prestige, recognition, acceptance, to d- to deny us rights that other people have and then make second class citizens out of us, at best.

Deal Island is an interesting place.

It was very much a segregated community in more ways than one.

My experience, my earlier experience with uh, the white citizens was basically confrontational.

PENNY: I have a cousin, George, uh, that had to fight every day.

He had to fight this this one family almost all the time.

PASTOR WALLACE: One of the most hated dogs I've ever experienced growing up in Deal Island, and I still carry that today, is a three legged black dog that was the meanest three legged dog, or dog, period.

PENNY: And my sister Portia would hear the word "nigger" all the time.

They would walk from Wenona to here.

PASTOR WALLACE: You could hear the white kid saying, "Sick him, sick him," and then little sucker would come out there, you know, that was a mean little dog.

PENNY: They would go by in a vehicle or that was one family.

The kids would run to the fence.

PASTOR WALLACE: So one day um, the um, the owner was crying and I could hear her crying.

I mean, she was boo hooing.

Um...

Someone ran over the dog and killed it.

PENNY: And they would call them "nigger" as they- as they walked by.

PASTOR WALLACE: Needless to say, I was not...

I was not saddened by the fact that that dog was killed.

You know, I'm like, "okay, good.

I don't have to worry about that one anymore."

PENNY: So those kids that did that had to hear that at home, had to hear that from the adults.

PASTOR WALLACE: That's what I think about mostly uh, when I think about Deal Island and things of that nature.

CHANELLE: I am born and bred on Deal Island.

I've been here all my life.

I live right down the road from the church.

RANDOLPH GEORGE: I am not from this place, um but for some reason I, I feel that it is it is home more than more than anywhere I've been.

CHANELLE: We call it the John Wesley Restoration Project.

CHANELLE: And our ultimate goal with this project is that we're going to turn this- both buildings, the church and the hall into a cultural and information center.

This is part of Deal Island history.

Um, buried in the cemetery are veterans of the Civil War, World War I, II, um, the Korean War and Vietnam.

RANDOLPH GEORGE: The Somerset County Historical Trust is really centered in Princess Anne.

But its... its mission is to look after, look at, remind people about the old structures in our county.

There are all kinds of different degrees of of preservation.

But when we see them fade away and die or burn or disappear, it's heart-wrenching for some of us.

VINCENT: So, to me it's that shared memory and with the cemeteries and the graveyards I mean, you're already starting out on low bottom land.

50 years ago, 60 years ago, 100 years ago and with climate change and sea level rise, not only are the caskets and the vaults floating away, but the shared memory is floating away.

RANDOLPH: You have to study to understand history.

You can't just imagine it.

You really have to read.

History is for the readers.

VINCENT: My clapback is that we come from a people that state law said we couldn't read, we couldn't write, we couldn't have access to books.

CHANELLE: Um Black people do care about their communities.

They care about their heritage.

RANDOLPH: Um... we're willing to assist anybody that shows the spirit, the will, to do the thing that we're- that's our favorite thing, which is preserving old structures.

CHANELLE: I have a heart for this preservation of this church, and not just this church.

The other churches, especially the other Black churches.

RANDOLPH: They need to be networked.

They need to step in and learn the rules.

PENNY HUMPHREY: We are a marginalized group of people.

Because of that, we do not have the connections that the Caucasian race is afforded and it affects us in so many different ways.

CHANELLE: I don't think we should let our heritage just fall down.

Where are we going to move... hundreds of caskets and graves?

Where are we going to move them?

'Cause there's nowhere else for them to go.

This church has been a beacon of the community since the 1800's, and our goal is that it will stay a beacon on this corner as long as Deal Island is here.

[Soft rock music plays] CHANELLE: Well, we're very excited.

Um, we have started our stabilization phase of the project.

They're here cleaning out the church.

Anything that's of value that can be salvaged, the windows are coming out to protect them during the next steps of the process.

Also, the bell tower will be stabilized.

That's where we are right now.

So... we're quite excited.

And funding comes through the Maryland Historical Trust and the African American um, Preservation Heritage Grant.

We have gotten $140,000 so far.

hopefully um, we'll get another $100,000 to go toward the next steps of our process.

It's a visible step of what we've been doing behind the scenes.

Now the community can see.

Now people as they drive past the church can see that there are efforts being made.

It's not just the church sitting on the corner where everybody rides by and says, well, it's been neglected, it's been abandoned.

Um, I think now as the community drives by, they can see that we're making progress, that we're making efforts to save this historic church structure.

But it has been an issue of funding.

It has been an issue of not having the manpower.

And now that we have that, you know, the community can see, well, yeah, an effort's being made.

[Music continues] CHANELLE: Grant funds are wonderful and they help with a lot, but they don't help with everything.

So... any support we can get, we always are very appreciative and we are grateful.

♪♪ CHANELLE: We've been working on this since 2011.

So, 11 years.

♪♪