On April 23 we will observe Yom HaShoah with a memorial service of poetry and music. Our guest speaker will be Pastor Michael Bledsoe, who will offer remarks on “A Dispatch From Campo del Ghetto Nuovo.”
Michael Bledsoe served as pastor for twenty-seven years of Riverside Baptist Church in SW Washington, DC. In his church service, he was especially noted as an activist advocate for issues of peace and justice. During that time, he also taught as adjunct professor at Howard University School of Divinity.
Pastor Bledsoe was educated at Stetson University (‘76) where he earned the Bachelor of Arts in Religion, at Southern Seminary in Louisville where he earned a Master of Divinity (‘83) and the Ph.D. in World Religions (‘88). He was ordained in the American Baptist Churches, USA.
Having visited the Soviet Union in 1983 and walked into the ravine known as Babi Yar in Ukraine, Pastor Bledsoe made a yearly practice of reciting names of those who perished there during Days of Remembrance at the Hall of Remembrance at the U.S. Holocaust Museum.