An institution in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Liberty City, “The Ship” had borne witness to many of the seminal events of the past century, shepherding its followers during Jim Crow and the heyday of the KKK, through the civil rights movement to the racial justice protests of recent years.

After months of controversy over new directives governing classroom instruction in Florida — changes that critics said sanitized or even distorted the past — he and other Black pastors across the state agreed their churches had no choice but to respond.

Then Smith said he wanted to show a documentary about an “injustice that has taken place right here in the state of Florida many years ago.” He stepped aside as the video began playing and a woman named LaVon Bracy recounted being beaten when she became one of the first three Black students at Gainesville High School in 1964.

Her resolve was only strengthened when the new standards were released this summer, with a line mandating middle-schoolers be taught “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Faith in Florida’s website now greets visitors with a pop-up message imploring them to sign the pledge.

They wanted to cover a timespan from before slavery to modern times, including the Middle Passage, white supremacy and race riots, the Black Panther Party and what they called the “criminal injustice system.”

In a sermon centered on leaning on faith in times of struggle, he wove in the year-long bus boycott in the mid-1950s in Montgomery, Ala., Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., a decade later and the March on Washington in 1963.

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