Top: Mae Gibson Brown, with her daughter Janet Brown-Clayton, receives the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award. Bottom: Members of the IBC Singers start the afternoon service in song. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Each sentence was a prayer, rising towards the rafters. You are the source of my strength! Voices rose and crested, spilling out into the first pews. You are the strength of my life! Singers looked to where listeners had stood, lifted their arms and begun to worship. I lift my hands in total praise to you. In the honeyed light of the late afternoon, you could hear the sound and know what it meant to see God.
That sound filled Immanuel Baptist Church Sunday, as the Salt & Pepper Gospel Singers celebrated 40 years of music making in and well beyond New Haven. The brainchild of educators Mae Gibson Brown and Sheila Dietz Bonenberger, the group brings together Black and white singers to perform gospel music, with songs that pay homage to the tradition's deep, sometimes painful roots and also fold in contemporary voices like Donnie McClurkin and Hezekiah Walker.
In the past four decades, they have graced town festivals, churches both urban and rural, choir competitions, performing arts institutions and prisons, including memorably and multiple times at the Osborn Correctional Institution. They have also mourned together, including powerhouse vocalists like Miriam Doggett-Guest in 2009 and Chuck Brown, Brown's son and the group's inaugural artistic director, in 2021. Forty years in, they have become a tight-knit family, able to show up for each other in ways that many of them find completely unique to the group.
Top: Emcee Rosa Richardson-Dolberry, who shared the mic with former Salt & Pepper member and educator Sean Hardy. Bottom: Vocalist Barbara Joyner congratulates Mae Gibson Brown.
"We came here to have a good time in the Lord," said emcee Rosa Richardson-Dolberry, who shared the mic with former Salt & Pepper member and educator Sean Hardy. "When they sing, you know that God is speaking to you."
That ministry—and it really is music as ministry—began in October 1984, when Brown and two of her children performed at a potluck at the Wightwood School in Branford. At the time, Brown was working at Wightwood, where she ultimately stayed on, educating thousands of students, as the only Black teacher for 48 years.
Bonenberger, who is also a poet and writer, felt something stir within her as she listened. Back then, she was singing in a Lutheran church choir and hadn’t experienced anything like Black gospel music. “I had never heard anyone sing like I heard them sing,” she said.
“At the time, I didn’t know that it was the spirit of the Lord that you were feeling, but I felt a tremendous sense of unity, and I felt it as love,” she said in Not Just Good Time Sunday, a 1992 documentary about the group from the late filmmaker Gary Keys. “That you were united in love. And I wanted to be part of that.”
Top: Co-founder Sheila Dietz Bonenberger. Bottom: Ronnie Pollard, who has directed the choir for much of its four decades.
This, both said Sunday, is where their stories diverge. As Bonenberger remembers it, she approached Brown after she and her kids had finished singing, and asked if she could join the group for lessons. Brown, who doesn't mince words, remembers it being a little more forward—and for her, entirely surprising.
"She said, 'Mae! Do you think it's possible for a white person to sing Black gospel music?'" Brown remembered to bell-like, sonorous laughter that undulated through the pews and rose toward the ceiling. "And I said, 'Why would you want to?'"
Bonenberger was persistent: she explained that she had been moved profoundly. So Brown, insisting that the family was busy, asked her to check back in January. Bonenberger jotted down a date in her calendar and counted the weeks until the group could sing together.
When January came and school resumed, "I ran up to Mae, and I said, 'I'm ready!'" Bonenberger remembered Sunday. Even decades later, she smiled immediately at the memory, her cheeks rosy.
"And I said, ready for what?" Brown chimed in, finishing the thought to more laughter, louder and freer this time. But Brown didn't say no, either, and Bonenberger brought two other white people, or "Salts," with her to Brown's home in Beaver Hills. That was how they ended up on a porch on Winthrop Avenue one evening, ready to sing their hearts out.
Brown can still remember the shock in her son's voice when he announced that there were three white people at the door. Her daughter Janet, who went on to be a beloved educator herself, was equally skeptical. But they followed their mother's lead, obedient when she told them that they were there to sing. "And oh my God, it was beautiful," Brown remembered.
In those early days, the group still didn't have a name: it was just Brown, her children, and three white friends (this, too, garnered laughter from the audience during Sunday’s service). But when Brown got a call to perform at the first Branford Town Festival that summer, she had to give the organizers a title for their act. The Salt & Pepper Gospel Singers were born.
Since that moment, the choir has had many homes, from Branford to the Agape Christian Center to St. Mary's UFWB in Newhallville (then St. Andrew's Episcopal Church) to Immanuel Baptist on Chapel Street, where they currently rehearse weekly. Brown, too, has gone on her own spiritual journey, from Agape (where she took Bonenberger to a service years ago, for her to better understand the Black Church) to St. Matthews Unison Free Will Baptist, where she serves as an associate minister and leads Mama Mae’s Shoebox Ministry.
In between, members have performed across the East Coast, in New York City and down the Northeast Corridor, including at the Apollo Theater, Lincoln Center, and at the National Cathedral.
Top: Immanuel Baptist Church Rev. Samuel T. Ross-Lee. Bottom: Former Salt & Pepper member June Pierce (in the purple), who joined the group after hearing them singing in a public park.
While their sonic footprint has extended far beyond New Haven, they are most rooted in the heart of the Elm City, where they build community each week through gospel music. Under the watchful eye (and ears) of Ronald “Ronnie” Pollard, they have learned how to bring their voices together, finding harmony when the world has—particularly as of late—seemed increasingly more discordant.
While membership is a rotating door with a few 39- and 40-year veterans (among them are Rev. Harlon Dalton, who wrote about the choir in his book Racial Healing), Bonenberger estimated that together, all members past and present could fill Immanuel Baptist’s sanctuary.
Sunday, the sheer impact of those 40 years was clear from the very beginning of the afternoon, as Rev. Samuel T. Ross-Lee began his remarks not with scripture, but with song. Looking out at the congregation, he sang out the first lines of "I'm On The Battlefield For My Lord," his voice deep and rich as it rolled through the church. Behind him, the IBC Singers—that’s Immanuel Baptist’s in-house group—came to their feet and joined the worship.
I am on the battlefield for my Lord, the words echoed through the space, and several attendees came to their feet, extending their arms toward the high ceiling. Light filtered in through the stained glass windows, bright and prismatic. I'm on the battlefield for my Lord! Along one wall, several bright pennants reminded people of the church’s long history in the region.
Patricia Carmichael-Higdon.
“Hallelujah!” someone yelled from the third pew, and a smile flickered across Pollard’s face. He later said that he was grateful to be there: he had started the day feeling unwell, but couldn’t imagine not being present for the anniversary celebration.
“It’s a family,” he said later in the afternoon, as the group wound towards the end of the service with an arrangement of “Total Praise” that both Pollard and the choir have come to love. “Anything you need,” members will go out of their way to get it for each other. “We would love to share our music and ministry with you.”
That was true for many of the attendees in the audience, from Salt & Pepper alumni to guest choirs that took the stage throughout the afternoon. At one point, Barbara Joyner brought the spirit to life, making Norman Hutchins’ “Thank You For Another Day” entirely her own. At another, the pulpit might as well have belonged to Patricia Carmichael-Higdon, who got the church on its feet, two dozen hands lifted toward the ceiling as she sang.
But it was perhaps Dr. Willie McKay, executive director of New Dimension Project Inc., who brought the greatest surprise of the afternoon. In between sweet soul-nourishing selections, testimonials, and a proclamation from the New Haven Board of Alders, McKay took the stage to present Brown with a Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing “a life lived in service” to New Haven, to the church, and to her educational and spiritual communities.
He clarified that the president in question was Joseph R. Biden; he and Brown’s unofficial fan club have been working towards this for two years.
Top: Dr. Willie McKay. Bottom: Mae Gibson Brown and Janet Brown-Clayton.
Beaming as he handed a medal to Janet Brown-Clayton, who placed it gently on her mother, he championed all Brown has done for the greater New Haven community, from her five decades in elementary education to her kindness on Christmas Day, when she heads out in the wee hours of the morning to deliver hats, gloves, scarves and coats to those who need them. McKay, who is also a faith leader, paused to praise Brown for her tireless work, which has included going back to school for her own graduate degree in 2017, when she was 79 years old.
“We are living in a moment that calls for hope and light, and love,” he said, reading from Joe Biden’s own words on the certificate. “Hope for our futures, light to see our way forward, and love for one another. Through your service, you are providing all three.”
And for 40 years, she has. Over its history, Salt & Pepper has become many different things to many people, but some form of healing is almost always involved (“It served as helping me connect all parts of myself,” remembered Dalton in 2022, while reflecting on Chuck Brown’s life).
That was the case for Kate Reynolds, who sang with the group for several years before stepping away to start a family of her own. The first time she heard the choir sing, she was at a choir competition at the Shubert Theatre, and something about the music stayed with her. “It was not the best time in my life, and the song got me,” she remembered.
It was the end of 1986, and the group was still just growing into itself. Before long, she was rehearsing with the singers, a tradition she picked up anew two weeks ago, when she rejoined after several years away. As she made her way through the front of the church, it felt like a family reunion, as she approached former members with a squeal and a hug. At one moment, it seemed that she and June Pierce, a retired nurse who first heard the group singing in a park, could have finished each other’s sentences.
“There’s a cross-culture in this group that becomes one,” Reynolds said.
Hardy, meanwhile, fondly remembered the impact that the group—and the Brown family, including children Chuck Brown and Janet Brown-Clayton—has had on his own life. Decades ago, Hardy’s parents met Brown after she made the move to New Haven from her native West Virginia in 1954. By the time Hardy was in his teens, he and Brown-Clayton were close friends.
So when, in 1986, she mentioned that they had to stop at a rehearsal before their weekly dinner, he tagged along. He ended up singing with the group for decades. To emcee the event, and help present Brown with a presidential recognition, was an honor, he said.
“I’m humbled that I am a part of this,” he said. “It feels good to be alive.”
To listen to more from Sunday's service, click on the videos above.