“We are also moving forward with our intentionality, of living our core values of uplifting our community,” Allen emphasized. “That’s why we created MTZ Charitable Organization, a separate 501(c)(3) to focus on the needs of our community in terms of food, mental health, our children learning, our children learning in foster care, our children in juvenile detention, and older adults. We are just very intentional of not only being a spiritual place where people can grow. But we are also focused on meeting the needs of individuals so that they can grow and prosper and be able to expand the great things that are before them.”

And just like the church role in supporting the modern Civil Rights Movement, Allen realizes that there is a great need for the Black Church to continue to be involved, especially in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling that basically gutted the Voting Rights Act, allowing especially Southern States to dilute and disempower the Black vote.

“As we look at where we are today, we have to be very intentional when it comes to voting,” Allen said. “And we have to be very intentional in terms of who we are voting for and intentional in terms of how we motivate and inspire our people to go vote. Of course, we want to provide as much information as possible to tell people who is on the ballot. At our church, we are a site for the city of Madison’s early voting. We try to make voting as easy as possible. When you come to worship, you can vote. And so we are intentional about that. But we definitely have to be more intentional about informing people about what is going on. When you say they are stripping away the Voting Rights Act, some really don’t know what that means unless you watch the news and understand the 15^th Amendment, understand that we’ve always had the right to vote. But they put in other measures to prevent African American people from voting. Those were literacy tests and competency tests. They put in measures that were outrageous and foolish that stopped you from being able to vote. That’s why the Voting Rights Act was so important.”

And the right to vote and other rights did not come pain-free. People made greaqt sacrifices — even sacrificing their lives — so that others could vote and have a semblance of control over their lives.

“What hurts me the most is understanding that the Black people that died for us to have these rights, died fighting for the rights of African Americans, but every minority group has benefited from the deaths of African Americans in this country,” Allen said. “But you don’t see many stand up for the rights of all. Even Clarence Thomas is one who is African American and just totally forsakes what was done for us to be able to stand in line and vote, us being able to go to any place we wanted to and live.”

And in a very real sense, the elements that create an effective lack of representation exist in Wisconsin. Segregation still relatively exists in Wisconsin, perhaps less by neighborhood and more by whole relatively small communities.

“That takes us back to this government really doesn’t care about their people,” Allen said. “I’m pretty sure there are some people who work in the State Capitol in the state of Wisconsin who have never seen Black people until they came to the legislature. And it’s people who live up north who are making decisions for the people who live in the southern and eastern ends of the state, people whom they have never engaged with before, probably have never been in their cities, never drove down their streets, never attended one of their schools, never saw the stress and the pain and the struggle of their people. And now we have allowed those individuals to make decisions for people whom they do not know or understand the culture of those people. It’s disheartening and it’s sad and troublesome because now you have people making laws for people whom they do not know. The gerrymandering and how they are separating people is trying to control people. It’s sad to think that the Supreme Court would make the suggestion that racism is no longer in America. It’s very disheartening. It’s something that we experience everyday, especially when we see the systemic racism that keeps African Americans in place to continue to oppress African American people and then try to blame us for the state that we are in when you develop a system to keep us oppressed and then tell us it’s our fault that we can’t climb out of it.”

When reflecting on integration, Allen said that there has been something gained, but also something lost.

“When I was in the seminary, my professor made a statement that at first I really didn’t agree with,” Allen recalled. “He said the worst thing that happened to African American people was integration because under segregation, we were more innovative. We had our own businesses. We ran our community. We were doing so much better by ourselves. And now we want to see if white people’s water tastes better than our water. Now we found out that there are a lot benefits of integration. But there are some things that hinder us where we have taken our money out of our community and put it in the white community in making other individuals so much more rich while our community hasn’t arrived at the place that we want to be even to this day. We act like the Civil Rights Movement happened hundreds of years ago. It’s only been 60 years. It’s not too long ago. We’re still trying to get to that place where we are trying to catch up.”

As it enters its 116^th year, Allen feels good about where Mt. Zion is and its ability to address the challenges faced by the Black community.

“Mt. Zion today is a thriving, growing church full of history, but very optimistic for the future in the direction that we are going in,” Allen said. “We stand on the shoulders of those who