About the Film
The African American community depicted in this documentary lived and worshiped in Rappahannock County, Virginia, at a time when the county was beginning to feel the effects of the rapid population growth and development spreading outward from Northern Virginia. Agriculture—primarily cattle, sheep, horse farming, and apple orchards—had long been the county's dominant economic engine, and many local African American families traced their ancestry to people who had been enslaved by the area's white landowners.
By the mid-twentieth century, agricultural mechanization was reducing the need for farm labor, while the Jim Crow social order continued to limit opportunities for Black residents. Facing both economic and social pressures, many African American families left Rappahannock for jobs and greater freedom in Washington, D.C. This migration paralleled the movement of white residents from Appalachia and other economically depressed regions of the South into Northern Virginia, a story explored in another Folkstreams film, It Ain't City Music (1973).
Come Day, Go Day, God Send Sunday captures a community in transition, documenting both the role of the church and the forces that were reshaping rural Black life in Virginia. Hopewell Church, featured prominently in the film, still stands in Rappahannock County today. However, its congregation has dwindled to only a handful of members, and the church now opens for services only a few times each year.
