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A sharecropper’s son who becomes a classically trained international singer and educator, shares his inspirational journey of hope, faith, and spiritual discovery.
CHAPTER ONE
Oral Moses
RENOWNED VOCALIST/EDUCATOR
Celebrated leader of the National Urban League, contextualizes his famous life and work and his family’s contributions deeply within the history of the
American republic.
CHAPTER TWO
Hugh Price
LEGENDARY CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER
Lawyer, entrepreneur and educational leader, pens a 21st-century, Baldwin-esque exhortation to grandson.
CHAPTER THREE
Thomas M. Jackson
EDUCATION ENTREPRENEUR
A preacher engages the sui generis problem of American racism and injustice within the broader context of two urgent problems—televised police murder and violence and the COVID-19 pandemic.
CHAPTER FOUR
Rev. James H. Harris
PREACHER
Emmy-award winning journalist, reflects upon his personal and professional search for peace and truth against a complicated backdrop of love, pain, and “family” secrets and lies.
CHAPTER FIVE
Shannon Travis
PUBLICIST/JOURNALIST
Chaplain, seminary professor, and Baptist preacher, unpacks head-on the boldness of racial oppression and certain raw struggles and strategies for hope and resistance during the global pandemic.
CHAPTER SIX
Rev. F. Keith Slaughter
PROFESSOR/PREACHER
Celebrated Civil Rights Era photographer and museum owner, casually discusses his iconic photography and its enduring cultural relevance.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cecil Williams
LEGENDARY PHOTOGRAPHER
Missionary, educator, and healthcare professional, charts his redemptive journey from childhood abandonment to adolescent rescue and new life in Christ, highlighting along the way an understanding of the structural intentionality of American racism.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Austin L. Scott
MISSIONARY/HEALTH PROFESSIONAL
New York journalist and media company owner conveys the struggles of growing up as a talented athlete and the son of a loving, supportive, and protective mother and an alcoholic, mercurial, and too-often disengaged father.
CHAPTER NINE
Rodney J. Reynolds
MEDIA OWNER/ENTREPRENEUR
Senior-level educational administrator reflects on his world and family values as well as his academic and intellectual journey as a black, middle-class son, husband, father, and friend.
CHAPTER TEN
Norm Jones
EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATOR
The New Jersey entrepreneur reveals an enduring Christian faith amidst the complexity of having been deeply loved by his mother but resoundingly rejected by his father, all while navigating a strangely cruel and racialized world.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jason Manuel
ENTREPRENEUR/STRATEGIST
Baptist preacher, husband, and father, wrestles with the terror of the Trayvon Martin slaying and the breathtaking implications that arise through witnessing and fearing racist events both personally and societally.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rev. Darryl W. Aaron
PREACHER
Hoosier educator, elected official, and minister, exhorts multi-generational audiences to draw upon biblical wisdom and other ancient precepts and examples to combat the perils of racism and the risks of personal failure.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Vernon G. Smith
MINISTER/POLITICIAN
New York educational leader born in segregated, rural Georgia, charts powerful paths which include his time as a valedictorian, community leader, Black Panther, political prisoner, school superintendent, family man, and much more.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Askia Davis
EDUCATIONAL LEADER
Celebrated educator, novelist and musician, who identifies as “black, male, queer,” shares soulful testimonies about his passage to manhood, self-knowledge, and love.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Daniel Black
AUTHOR/EDUCATOR
Renowned Afro-Latino poet, professor, and griot, recalls giants of the Black and Nuyorican world, centering the life and legacy of Miguel Algarín, and the impact of literary giants
on Medina’s own life.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Tony Medina
LEGENDARY POET/EDUCATOR
Filmmaker, lifestyle architect, and HBCU college trustee shares valuable lessons and insights gained from his nurturing neighborhood in Gary, Indiana, and the application of those lessons on his celebrity-laden philanthropic work in the broader world.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Taroue W. Brooks
FILMMAKER/PUBLICIST
World-traveled polyglot and ESL instructor shares, with humor, his Odyssean insights, critiques, and hard-earned truths as a “black, gay, non-theist” from the United States of America.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hank Grimes
POLYGLOT/WORLD TRAVELER
Afro-Rican poet, spoken word artist, relays his exceptional journey of survival, physical and intellectual hunger, and unexpected life-altering discoveries.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jamie "Shaggy" Flores
POET/EDUCATOR
Haitian-American photographer and New York creative and independent entrepreneur, reveals, with great wit, a marvelous and inspirational journey from boyhood to manhood, a trek spanning Haiti, Canada, and the US.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lazarus L. Baptiste
NIGHTOGRAPHER
Peniel Joseph
FOREWORD
Dr. Peniel Joseph authored the foreword to the Mannish Water anthology. He holds a joint professorship appointment at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the History Department in the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. He is also the founding director of the LBJ School’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy (CSRD). His career focus has been on “Black Power Studies,” which encompasses interdisciplinary fields such as Africana studies, law and society, women’s and ethnic studies, and political science. Prior to joining the UT faculty, Dr. Joseph was a professor at Tufts University, where he founded the school’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy to promote engaged research and scholarship focused on the ways issues of race and democracy affect people’s lives. In addition to being a frequent commentator on issues of race, democracy, and civil rights, Dr. Joseph’s most recent book is The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. He also wrote the award-winning books Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America and Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama. His book Stokely: A Life has been called the definitive biography of Stokely Carmichael, the man who popularized the phrase “black power.” Included among Joseph’s other book credits is the editing of The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era and Neighborhood Rebels: Black Power at the Local Level.
Yohuru Williams
AFTERWORD
Dr. Yohuru Williams penned the afterword to the Mannish Water anthology. He is Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History, as well as the Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative, at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He received his PhD from Howard University in 1998 and is the author of: Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Panthers in New Haven (Blackwell, 2006); Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement (Routledge, 2015); and Teaching Beyond the Textbook: Six Investigative Strategies (Corwin Press, 2008). He is the editor of A Constant Struggle: African-American History from 1865 to the Present, Documents and Essays (Kendall Hunt, 2002) and is co-editor of The Black Panthers: Portraits of an Unfinished Revolution (Nation Books, 2016); In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement (Duke University Press, 2006); and Liberated Territory: Toward a Local History of the Black Panther Party (Duke University Press, 2008). Dr. Williams also served as general editor for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History’s 2002 and 2003 Black History Month publications, The Color Line Revisited Tapestry Press, 2002) and The Souls of Black Folk: Centennial Reflections (Africa World Press, 2003). He served as an advisor on the popular civil rights reader, Putting the Movement Back into Teaching Civil Rights. Dr. Yohuru Williams has appeared on a variety of local and national television programs, most notably on ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Aljazeera America, BET, CSPAN, EBRU Today, Fox Business News, Fresh Outlook, HuffPost Live, and NPR. He was featured in the Ken Burns PBS Documentary “Jackie Robinson” and the Stanley Nelson PBS Documentary “The Black Panthers.” Williams is also one of the hosts of the History Channel’s Web show “Sound Smart.” A regular commentator on the Cliff Kelly Show on WVON, Chicago, Dr. Williams also blogs regularly for the Huffington Post and is a contributor to The Progressive Magazine. His scholarly articles have appeared in the American Bar Association’s Insights on Law and Society, The Organization of American Historians Magazine of History, The Black Scholar, The Journal of Black Studies, Pennsylvania History, Delaware History, The Journal of Civil and Human Rights, and The Black History Bulletin. Dr. Williams is presently completing a new book, titled In the Shadow of the Whipping Post: Lynching, Capital Punishment, and Jim Crow Justice in Delaware 1865- 1965, under contract with Cambridge University Press.
CO-EDITOR
Carlton Long
Co-editor of the Mannish Water anthology, Carlton Long is a former Rhodes Scholar whose graduate research at Oxford University focused on the reification and social construction of “race” as well as the application of “affirmative action” (US) and “positive action” (UK) principles in the development of supplementary educational programs and schools in the communities of Brixton (South London) and Harlem (New York). Dr. Long received his undergraduate degree from Columbia University, where he later taught political science and was a Chamberlain Fellow and a multi-year nominee for the Mark Van Doren Teaching Award. He received a D.Min. degree from the Morehouse School of Religion, Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC),in Atlanta, Georgia, and was subsequently certified to preach within the Baptist polity. Aside from having taught at Columbia University, at London University (Goldsmiths College), and in a wide variety of college, university, and K-12 enrichment programs, he worked as an international and national staff developer, executive vice-president and CEO in the world of professional staff development. For over a decade, he has focused on enhancing honors programs within a wide range of private and state colleges and universities in the United States, including the brokering of opportunities for students at Yale University and Oxford University. With his wife, Monique, he has also prepared generations of college students to embrace the “Leadership Creation Process,” their unique model for pursuing prestigious scholarships and fellowships (Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright and more) with a view to becoming effective global leaders grounded in community-mindedness, service and grace.
CO-EDITOR
Olufemi Vaughan
Olufemi Vaughan. Co-editor of the Mannish Water anthology, Olufemi (“Femi”) Vaughan was raised in Ibadan, Nigeria and received his D.Phil. in politics from Oxford University. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Dr. Vaughan is also the Alfred Sargent Lee & Mary Farley Ames Lee Professor and Chair of Black Studies at Amherst College. Vaughan’s scholarship interrogates major themes in African studies, notably, state–society relations in Africa, religion and state formation in Africa, and globalization and migration in Africa. He is the author of four books, including Letters, Kinship, and Social Mobility in Nigeria (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023), Religion and the Making of Nigeria (Duke University Press, 2016; winner of Nigerian Studies Association Book Prize), Nigerian Chiefs: Traditional Power in Modern Politics (University of Rochester Press, 2000; Cecil Currey Book Prize, Association of Global South Studies). Professor Vaughan is the editor or co-editor of twelve volumes, most notably the multi-volume Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (editor-in-chief, Thomas Spear, Oxford University Press, 2019; Waldo Leland Prize, American Historical Association). Professor Vaughan is also the author of about eighty scholarly articles and reviews. Aside from the current Guggenheim award, his research has been supported by a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Fellowship. Vaughan was Professor of Africana Studies & History at Stony Brook University and the Geoffrey Canada Professor of Africana Studies & History at Bowdoin College.
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