One Community, Three Segregated Churches, and an Experiment in Democracy
In 2013, Jason Green left his position at the White House—a position he had worked most of his life to obtain—to sit with his terminally ill grandmother and be an audience for the stories she knew about their family and the community they all grew up in.
If you stop the description there, it may sound quaint and commendable. But what he learned was that the person he thought of as “Sweet Grandma Green” was a community organizer—and a bit of a radical—who helped merge three churches, two white and one Black, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Jason thought he would be the family archivist. Instead, he became convinced that the ordinary people he loved and grew up with had something urgent to teach us about the unfinished work of American democracy.
His new book is Too Precious to Lose: A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility. He spoke with Camber Creek’s Head of Platform, Lionel Foster, a few weeks before its publication.
The transcript has been edited for clarity.
Lionel Foster: Jason, welcome to Catalyst. Thanks for joining.
Jason Green: Thank you for having me. Great to see you.
Lionel Foster: Preparing for this interview and reading your book gave me pause—in the best way. You put so much of yourself and your family into it. There’s hope in it, but not hope built out of nothing—hope rooted in real experience and pain.
Before we get to the book, you’re a multihyphenate—entrepreneur, author, lawyer. You also worked in the White House. How did that happen?
Jason Green: I’m just a nobody trying to tell everybody about somebody who can change everybody. That’s all.
My journey starts in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Growing up near Washington, DC, I revered the presidency. I always wanted to do something that mattered. I wasn’t one of those kids who knew exactly what job they wanted. I just wanted to make people’s lives better.
I worked on local campaigns in Maryland, then on a gubernatorial campaign. That led to being lent to John Kerry’s campaign in 2004. I happened to be at the Democratic National Convention when then-candidate Barack Obama gave his speech. I didn’t know who he was. But when he began speaking about there being no red states and blue states, I had tears in my eyes. It reminded me of watching my father prepare sermons.
I told myself I would help him run for president one day. I didn’t expect that “one day” would be three years later.
When he announced, I put my life on the shelf and joined the campaign. That proximity eventually led to interviewing for and landing a role in the White House Counsel’s Office.
Lionel Foster: What strikes me is how un-cynical your entry into politics sounds.
Jason Green: I believe service is a manifestation of love. If you want to lead, you need to love your constituency. That’s foundational.
That doesn’t mean money doesn’t matter. Leaving a “good government job” to sit in a hospital room with my grandmother raised practical questions. My mother asked what I would do for money. My boss asked the same thing. I hadn’t even thought about it.
Everything we want to accomplish takes resources. The key is not to have a perverse relationship with money. Money can be a catalyst. It can fund love. The question is how we use it.
Ultimately, I went home and sat in her hospital room. My mother was there. I watched them volley stories back and forth—two Black women going back in time together. It gave me a window into who I am and where we come from.
Before she was Grandma Green, she was Ida Pearl Holman. She had a full life before I ever claimed her as mine.
That’s when I learned about the church merger.
I grew up in Quince Orchard, a rural farming community in Montgomery County, Maryland. The Black church was founded in 1888. The white church was founded in 1901. They lived parallel, segregated lives.
In 1968, both congregations faced a survival crisis. Membership was declining. Finances were tight. A merger was discussed.
The night Pleasant View, the Black church, gathered to debate its future, news arrived that Dr. King had been assassinated.
It was a forcing event. When they reconvened weeks later, they voted to merge—two white churches and one Black church.
When my grandmother told me this story, I didn’t believe her. Even though I had grown up in the merged church, I couldn’t believe people in 1968 would choose that experiment.
That’s when I realized my grandmother was a radical.
The real miracle wasn’t just coming together. It was staying together.
There were questions about leadership, preaching style, songbooks, seating. At one point, Black and white congregants still sat separately in the sanctuary. Individuals intentionally sat between them to integrate the space.
Coming together is necessary, but not sufficient. The capacity to stay together—that’s the work.
My uncle, now 102 years old, still drives an hour twice a week to sing in that sanctuary choir. When I asked why, he said it was important for people to see his face in that integrated choir in 1968—and it’s just as important now.
These aren’t just battles they fought. They’re battles they’re still fighting.
There’s also a complex relationship between memory and history. Sometimes stories are softened because the truth was too painful to confront.
Digging into the archives was painful but fulfilling. It filled out our family record in ways we never expected.
Lionel Foster: Remind us of the book title and where we can find it.
Jason Green: The book is Too Precious to Lose: A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility. It’s available for pre-order now through Penguin Random House and wherever books are sold.
Lionel Foster: Jason, thank you. This was a joy.
Jason Green: Thank you. Such a joy.