Talks & Entertainment

Sixth & I Board Member Eden Durbin welcomes you for an intimate, salon-style conversation on community, belonging, and how we move forward together with author and Montgomery County native Jason Green in conversation with Sixth & I CEO Heather Moran in honor of his book, Too Precious to Lose. It’s a moving and inspiring memoir from the former Obama White House staffer about his rural Maryland family’s untold history, the merger of three churches—one Black, two white—and how a radical embrace of community became their salvation, and his.

About Too Precious to Lose

A precocious preacher’s kid who grew up on Fellowship Lane in Montgomery County, Green devoted himself to public service and as a young attorney, served in the White House as special assistant to President Obama. But his government career was cut short when his beloved ninety-five-year-old grandmother was on her deathbed. At her side, he heard for the first time her life story dating back to her 1918 birth in Quince Orchard, a town erased by the vestiges of time.

Seeking to understand his roots, Green was set on a path of historical research, uncovering a surprising trove of tales about his newly freed ancestors who built an African American house of worship, and whose progeny, on the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, created an integrated church.

Told through the lens of Quince Orchard’s lost story, Too Precious to Lose explores Green’s own deeply personal questions about belonging, how the resilience and moral leadership of Black communities make up the texture in the American fabric, and the lessons we can all learn from the compassionate lives of his forebearers.