I missed this story until it showed up via The Washington Post‘s wire in a South Florida newspaper. Bill Cosby’s sermons and tribulations have received quite a bit of ink, but this is the first story I have seen that places them in the historic context of African American rhetoric and civic debates. This Detroit-angle story mentions the church, of course, but then drops that angle. Here is the hint of a larger story that remains unwritten: “What had drawn 1,900 people downtown on a yucky night was the sheer star power of a 67-year-old comedian who hadn’t come to do comedy. Bill Cosby had come to give a stern lecture — free of charge — about the failures of black parents, and the failures of black Christians, about how systemic racism can’t explain everything that drags down some African Americans, about how too many black youths are ‘standing on the University of the Corner’ and too many black adults are serving as poor role models.”