Cincinnati Search for Rebirth After Week of Violence
STEPHEN FRAZIER, CNN ANCHOR: Now, the other story we've been following all weekend long. People in Cincinnati, praying for the city's rebirth following days of violence and years of tension between the police and the black community. CNN's Brian Palmer is there. He files this report.</s>BRIAN PALMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At Cincinnati's New Prospect Baptist Church, songs of joy and praise on Easter, a holiday of rebirth and renewal. Just day after the church grieved for Timothy Thomas, a young black man shot by white Cincinnati police officer, Pastor Damon Lynch preached a sermon of biblical justice from the book of John, turning it into a lesson on contemporary social justice.</s>REV. DAMON LYNCH III, PASTOR: We need to have a resurrection.</s>PALMER: Joining Lynch were city officials and the Reverend Al Sharpton, the New York activist.</s>REV. AL SHARPTON, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: If you are saved in Cincinnati today, you need to be dealing with wicked people that shoot unarmed men.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: God is working in Cincinnati, and he's working in the world. But everything happening for a reason.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If the powers-that-be are listening and will respond in a positive way, we will have no more of this killing, no rioting, no more of the problems that we face here in Cincinnati.</s>PALMER: At the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Chains, a predominately white Catholic church across Central Parkway, a dividing line between black and white, a traditional Easter sermon, with an acknowledgement of the city's wounds.</s>DANIEL PILARCZYK, ARCHBISHOP OF CINCINNATI: On this unique day in the history of our local church, we also hope for new life for our civic community. We pray that the questions that have been raised by the events of these last days and the trials that we and others have experienced, will prove to be the jumping off point for an extended new life, an extended Easter for our city.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's unrest, and hopefully today, it will change.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't want it to be an unsafe city. I don't want people to hate one another. So, I want to see it stop. I want to hear what other people have to say.</s>PALMER (on camera): Members of both churches, black and white, say they hope Cincinnatians will act on these fine Sunday words during the difficult days and weeks to come. Brian Palmer, CNN, Cincinnati.