15th Annual Black New England Conference:
Crossing River Jordan: Healing Racial Wounds Through Accountability & Truth-Telling
Biographies of Panelists and Moderators
In order of appearance
VIRTUAL TOURS
Sonya Martino was born and raised in Manchester by a French-Canadian mother and a Puerto Rican father. As a single teenage mother now celebrating her marriage of 20 years, Sonya consistently earns admiration and accolades for demonstrating the power of a joyful spirit. This is her second year as a tour guide sharing Ona's story for the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire. She also brings her intellectual energy to the Portsmouth office when she makes a long commute to work as a volunteer in Archives & Research.
Kevin Wade Mitchel is a graduate of the Elma Lewis School of Performing Arts in Dorchester, MA. He has been acting professionally for over four decades. He has performed throughout New England in commercials, independent films, theatre, and an MTV video. He has been seen on NH Chronicle as Frederick Douglass. He recently performed as Jack Staines on the Gundalow sailing in our historic harbor, in the roles of Bill and Mahogany's Dad in "The Bus Stop" at the Seacoast Rep Theatre, and as Martin Luther King Jr. in "All the Way" at the Players' Ring.
OPENING CEREMONY
Robert Bellinger, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of History at Suffolk University. He is the founder and Director of the Black Studies program and Director of the Clark Collection of African American Literature. Professor Bellinger teaches classes in African American history, African Diaspora studies, and the history and culture of Senegal. His research interests include late 19th century African American history, West African history, culture, and drum traditions. In addition to his teaching and research, Professor Bellinger is also involved in training student teachers to teach history in the middle and secondary schools, working on the inclusion of African and African diaspora history and culture into school and university curricula, and working with study abroad programs that provide students an international, cross-cultural enhancement of their academic work.
PANEL #1: THE PAST IS NOT PAST: HISTORICAL BLACK PRACTICES OF SURVIVAL & CLAIMS TO FREEDOM
Chief Wándé Abímbọ́lá is a Nigerian academician, a professor of Yoruba language and literature, and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) and has also served as the Majority Leader of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He was installed as Àwísẹ Awo Àgbàyé in 1981 by the Ooni of Ife on the recommendation of a conclave of Babalawos of Yorubaland. Abímbọ́lá taught in three Nigerian universities, namely the University of Ibadan, University of Lagos, and the University of Ife. He has also taught at several US universities, including Indiana University, Amherst College, Harvard University, Boston University, Colgate University, and the University of Louisville. Abímbọ́lá has written several books on Ifá and Yoruba culture.
Robert H.Thompson is an Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a Conflict Resolution
Practitioner, and the Pastor and Founder of Sovereign Souls Fellowship Church. He has lived in the seacoast area of New Hampshire for over thirty years. Throughout his time as a resident of New Hampshire, Thompson has actively striven to address issues of race and inclusion. He has done so by speaking publicly and willingly serving on civic committees and organizations that advance the work of making America a fully diverse nation. He is a member and was inaugural President of the Board of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, an organization that is dedicated to uncovering the otherwise hidden histories of Africans in New Hampshire. (https://blackheritagetrailnh.org) He also serves as a member of the Board of the Racial Unity Team which serves the Seacoast region of New Hampshire and addresses relevant state-wide matters. With his new work as Pastor of Sovereign Souls Fellowship, he hopes to build community and strengthen bonds across barriers that more often serve as opportunities for exclusion. Rev. Thompson is married to Nadine Abraham Thompson, an entrepreneur, and Clinical Social Worker. They live in Exeter, NH, have two children and six grandchildren.
Christopher Cameron is Professor of History and Chair of the Africana Studies department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He was the founding president of the African American Intellectual History Society. Cameron received his B.A. in History from Keene State College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research and teaching interests include early American history, the history of slavery and abolition, and African American religious and intellectual history. Cameron is the author of To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement (Kent State University Press, 2014) and Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism (Northwestern University Press, 2019). Cameron is also the co-editor of Race, Religion, and Black Lives Matter: Essays on a Moment and a Movement (Vanderbilt University Press, 2021) and New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (Northwestern University Press, 2018). His current book project, entitled Liberal Religion and Race in America, explores the intersection of race and liberal religion dating back to the mid-18th century and the varied ways that liberal theology has informed African American religion and politics in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Deborah Karyn King (Moderator) is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College, with affiliations in African & African American Studies and in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies. She received his B.A. in Sociology from Northwestern University and her Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University. Her research and teaching interests include race and gender, law and social control, and historical sociology. Her path-breaking article, “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness,” (Signs, 1988) laid the foundation for intersectionality. In 1991, she was one of three organizers of African American Women in Defense of Ourselves (AAWIDOO), a national campaign against the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U. S. Supreme Court. Other publications explore the erasure of African American women in Black political discourse as well as the ubiquitous representations of Black women as mammies in the histories of New England colleges, their work assignments in carceral settings, and contemporary characterizations of public figures such as First Lady Michelle Obama. She was awarded Dartmouth’s 2017 Martin Luther King Jr. Social Justice Award for Lifetime Achievement in recognition of over four decades as a leader working toward social justice through her research, pedagogy, institutional change-making, and as a mentor to generations of faculty and students. Dr. King is currently directing the Dartmouth and Slavery Project.
PANEL #2: A CHECK UNCASHED: PAST & PRESENT PROJECTS FOR REPARATIONS
Davarian L. Baldwin is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and founding director of the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities (Bold Type Books, 2021); Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (UNC, 2007), and co-editor (with Minkah Makalani) of the essay collection, Escape From New York: The New Negro Renaissance beyond Harlem (Minnesota, 2013). He is also co-editor of the Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy, a book series for Temple University Press, and serves as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. Baldwin is a public-facing scholar with deep investments in social justice. He serves on the executive committee of Scholars for Social Justice and his commentaries have been featured in numerous outlets from NBC News, PBS, and The History Channel to USA Today, the Washington Post and, TIME.
Dr. Alan Bean is the executive director of Friends of Justice, an organization that creates a powerful synergy between grassroots organizing, civil rights advocacy, the legal community, the mass media, and ultimately the political establishment. Friends of Justice is committed to building a new moral consensus for ending mass incarceration. Dr. Bean has been quoted extensively in leading news outlets such as Newsweek, The Washington Post, USA Today, Le Monde, The Chicago Tribune, and CNN. His work with Friends of Justice has been featured in religious media outlets such as EthicsDaily.com and writes a monthly column for Baptist News Global. He is also the author of Taking out the Trash in Tulia, Texas, an insider account of the events surrounding the Tulia drug sting.
Kathleen Anderson is a third-generation master’s degree holder whose concentration was Multicultural Diversity and Organizational Development. Over the past twenty-five years Kathleen's community involvement has included coordinator of the Parent Involvement Project, through which she initiated the “Parents are Teachers Too” workshop series; co-founder, facilitator and facilitator trainer of the Amherst, MA Study Circles dialogues on race and class; executive board member of the international organization, Training for Change. Ms. Anderson is the past President of the Amherst NAACP Branch. Currently, Kathleen serves as the Female Co-Chair of the New England chapter of N'COBRA.
Dottie Morris (Moderator) is Associate Vice-President for Institutional Diversity and Equity at Keene State College. She serves on the president’s cabinet, providing support and direction to the executive, academic, student affairs, advancement, and finance and planning divisions of the college.
PANEL #3: TELL IT TRUE: HEALING THROUGH PUBLIC MEMORY & MEMORIALS
Michelle Browder is an artist, community activist, and sculptor based in Montgomery, AL. She is also the founder and owner of a history tour company in Montgomery. She blends art, history, and “real talk” in her work. This month she unveiled a visionary sculpture of the ”mothers of gynecology,” who were three enslaved women—Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey— who in the 1840s-1850s were experimented upon without anesthesia by Dr. Marion Sims. Sims’ innovative medical procedures earned him fame as the “father of gynecology.” In Montgomery, he is honored by a statue for his work. His female subjects have been forgotten until now. See Michelle’s website: www.anarchalucybetsey.org.
Imari Paris Jeffries is the Executive Director of King Boston, a nonprofit working closely with the City of Boston and the Boston Foundation to create a living memorial and programs honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, and their time and work together in Boston. The memorial is intended to inspire visitors to reflect on the values of racial and economic justice that both espoused. Through the memorial and related programming, King Boston envisions an inclusive and equitable Boston for all. He has served in executive roles at Parenting Journey, Jumpstart, Boston Rising, and Friends of The Children. He serves as a Trustee of the UMass System, as well as on the boards of USES, Providers Council, and Governor Baker’s Black Advisory Commission. He is a three-time graduate of UMass Boston and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. through UMass Boston’s Higher Education Program.
Jerome Meadows is a full-time studio artist working and residing in a historic Ice House in Savannah, Georgia. Originally from New York City, he has been living in Savannah since 1997. A graduate with a BFA degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA degree from the University of Maryland, Mr. Meadows has been self-employed as a visual artist and public space designer since 1992. His focus in the arts has been on the design and fabrication of large-scale public art projects, including site layout, landscape issues, along with the conceptualization and fabrication of sculptural components all fully integrated into a cohesive whole. These projects are located throughout the United States.
Mr. Meadows recently completed the Ed Johnson Memorial in Chattanooga, TN. THis public art work memorializes the brutal and unjust lynching of Mr. Ed Johnson, a young African American male, by way of mob violence in 1906. The project also represents the first and only time tha tthe US Supreme Court intervened in a state civil rights case. Mr. Meadows and the memorial were featured in a recent New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/
Elizabethada (Liz) Wright does research on the rhetoric of memorial place as well as on nineteenth-century women’s rhetoric. With all her work focusing on how marginalized people find voice in societies that try to silence them, most recently she has been examining the influence of French Catholic women religious (commonly known as nuns) on writing pedagogy in the United States. Dr. Wright’s work outside the academy has similar goals: she has been an activist in many areas of social justice, co-hosted and co-produced a radio show on not-for-profit companies, and owned a fair-trade company, Fa La Lo. Additionally, before entering the academy, Dr. Wright worked in the professional theatre as a member of the Actor’s Equity Association, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America. Dr. Wright is a Professor and member of the English Graduate Faculty at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Nadine Petty (Moderator) is Associate Vice President for Community, Equity, and Diversity and Chief Diversity Officer at the University of New Hampshire. Prior to arriving at UNH, Nadine served as Executive Director of the Center for Diversity and Enrichment at the University of Iowa, where she led a large team of staff dedicated to the success of students with marginalized identities Dr. Petty has over twenty years of experience in educational settings, including fourteen years in higher education. For most of her personal life and professional career, she has devoted herself to a wide range of diversity and social justice causes and endeavors which include teaching cultural ethnography courses, serving on and leading various diversity-related committees and boards, and creating and strengthening diversity and inclusion services in various institutions and within communities and school districts.
PANEL #4: MY HOME IS OVER JORDAN: THE ROLE OF RELIGION & SPIRITUALITY IN BLACK HEALING
Pamela Ayo Yetunde, Th.D., is a pastoral counselor and Community Dharma Leader. Ayo is the co-founder of Center of the Heart (www.centeroftheheart.org). She is the co-editor of Nautilus Book Award-winning Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation and Freedom (2020), and the author of the Frederick J. Streng Award-winning Buddhist-Christian Dialogue, U.S. Law, and Womanist Theology for Transgender Spiritual Care (2020). She also wrote Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality in Womanist Practical Theology (2018). Ayo founded Buddhist Justice Reporter: The George Floyd Trials (www.buddhistjustice.com). Ayo grew up in the United Methodist Church and has been part of the Church of the Brethren, Quaker, Episcopal, and Lutheran communities.
Rev Lauren Smith was appointed Director of Stewardship and Development at the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) in February 2019. Her ties to Unitarian Universalism stretch back five generations. Her great-great-grandfather William Hazel was born a free black person in North Carolina and became a member of the First Parish in Cambridge after his family fled north prior to the Civil War. Rev. Smith served as co-minister of South Church Unitarian Universalist in Portsmouth, NH from 2011 through 2018, along with her husband, the Rev. Chris Holton Jablonski. She also served as assistant minister at the UU congregation in San Mateo, CA, and as an Island Minister of the Star Island Retreat Center. Before entering seminary ministry, she worked as an Assistant Director at the Harvard Business School Fund.
Rev Effie McAvoy is a Full Elder in the United Methodist Church, currently serves as lead pastor of Shepherd of the Valley Church in Hope, RI, and is the chair of the New England Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church (NEAC UMC) Commission on Religion and Race (CoRR). The role of CoRR in every level of the UMC is to educate the body on issues of race, racism, implicit bias, Eurocentrism, and xenophobia. In its mission, CoRR is also called to speak truth to power and hold leaders to accountability in regards to issues of race, culture, and ethnicity. In addition to her role as chair of NEAC CoRR, she also is a member of the Connectional Table of NEAC which oversees the work of program ministries within the New England Annual Conference.
She was ordained a Deacon in June of 1997 and an elder in full connection to the Western North Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church in June of 1999. After serving churches in North Carolina for 13 years, she transferred to the New England Annual Conference. She earned her BA degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Women’s Studies from Appalachian State University in 1994 and her M-Div. from Boston University in 1997. Reverend McAvoy has received certificates from Duke Divinity Preaching Institute, Disciple Bible Study, and the Maine Criminal Justice Academy in police chaplaincy.
Her life verse comes from the Book of Romans 12:3 which states “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”
L. Chris Matthews (Moderator)joined SNHU in 2012 and serves as associate professor of Business Administration and Management, lead of Project AIM, and director of the University Honors Program. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Delaware, a Master of Business Administration from Roosevelt University and a Doctor of Business Administration from Argosy University. During his tenure at SNHU he has developed unique courses such as Leadership Through Dance, Innovations In Business, and Social Issues in Communities. Prior to Matthews’ time in New Hampshire, he served as director of fundraising events for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago and as an adjunct professor at Roosevelt University. His research interests include organizational culture, global leadership practices, and social justice and equity. He serves in leadership roles for several nonprofit organizations including the Endowment for Health, World Affairs Council of NH, Downtown Manchester YMCA Advisory Board, New England Names Project, Granite State Gay Men’s Association, Hooksett Area Rotary Club, and Queen City Pride.
PANEL #5: THE RIGHT TO BE WHOLE: NEW MODES FOR HEALING GENERATIONAL & HISTORICAL BLACK TRAUMA
Sheila Wise Rowe is a truth-teller who writes passionately about matters of faith and emotional healing. She advocates for the dignity, rights, and healing of abuse survivors and those carrying racial trauma, and for racial conciliation. Sheila holds a master’s degree in Counseling and has lived in the USA, Paris, France, and Johannesburg, South Africa. For over twenty-five years she has been a counselor, educator, writer, spiritual director, and speaker. Sheila is a member of the Community Ethics Committee of Harvard Medical School, a policy-review resource for its teaching hospitals. She is a member of the Redbud Writers Guild and writes essays for several publications including The Boston Globe, The Redbud Post, Patheos,Mudroomblog, and Ready Publication. Sheila's book, Healing Racial Trauma: The Road to Resiliencewas released by IV Press (IVP) on January 7, 2020. Healing Racial Trauma was awarded the 2021 best book in Christian Living/ Discipleship by Christianity Today. Sheila's newest book entitled, Young, Gifted, and Black: A Journey of Lament and Celebrationwill be released in February 2022
Geneva Ree Taylor is a native of Seattle, where she received her master’s from Seattle Pacific University in Reconciliation and Intercultural Studies. She has focused her work on healing trauma in the Black community, through restorative practices that include, but are not limited to healing circles, mediation, and facilitated conversations. She strongly believes in the practice of reconciliation work, meaning she steers away from merely discussing the topic of reconciliation, but is truly passionate about diving into the practices that facilitate reconciliation. Ms. Taylor is a gifted, certified mediator that guides people through difficult conversations in the work field and in the community. This includes training mediators at King County’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Center. Ms. Taylor currently works as a Community Engagement Specialist for the Office of Police Accountability (OPA), where she leads in the restorative practices for Seattle Police Department’s EEO complaints. Also, she has guided OPA through revamping and establishing a viable mediation program. Ms. Taylor volunteers her time using her skills in the community with various organizations; leading healing circles with inter-city youth and facilitates all-Black healing circles for church congregates dealing with injustices in the Black community. Recently, she started working with Washington Building Leaders of Change (WA-BLOC) at Rainier Beach High School where she is training faculty, staff, and youth from the Seattle Public School in Restorative Justice Practices. To learn more about her work on healing from racial trauma please find her thesis “The Black Reconciliation” and look forward to her book in late 2022.
Melina Hill Walker (moderator) is a Program Director at the Endowment for Health where she manages a portfolio of grants, projects, and policy initiatives to advance health equity. Prior to her appointment at the Endowment, Melina was a program leader for the Aging Resource Center at the Dartmouth Centers for Health & Aging. Before that, she was a grants and special projects coordinator for Visiting Nurse & Hospice of Vermont and New Hampshire. Melina also has extensive experience in a variety of research and project coordination roles at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Earlier in her career, she ran an independent health care consultancy. Melina also served as a senior community health planner in New York City and prior to that, worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a public health volunteer and program assistant. Melina holds a Master of Science in Health Policy & Management from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Bachelor of Arts in English/American Literature from Brown University. She has also served in volunteer and board roles for several academic and nonprofit organizations including Dartmouth Hitchcock and the Upper Valley Hostel.
PANEL #6: I’LL FLY AWAY: HOW WE MOVE FORWARD FROM HERE
Belvie Rooks is a writer, educator and human rights activist, whose work weaves the worlds of spirituality, feminism, ecology and social justice. She is Co-founder of Growing A Global Heart (GGH) with her husband, poet Dedan Gills (1945-2015). GGH is an intergenerational wisdom sharing and mentoring project. It is also a project that has inspired the ceremonial planting of trees, along the TransAtlantic Slave Route in West Africa and the the Underground Railroad in the Southern United States and Canada. Her recently published works include, I Give You the SPRINGTIME of My Blushing Heart: A Poetic Love Song by Belvie and Dedan. She and Dedan are also featured contributors to The Power of Love: A Transformed Heart Changes the World along with Houston Smith, Betty Eadie, the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers and others; their work is also prominently featured in Reverend Dr. Barbara Holmes' recently published book dealing with collective trauma and collective healing entitled, Crisis Contemplation: Healing the Wounded Village.
Belvie's other writings and essays have been included in a number of publications and anthologies including Sacred Poems and Prayers of Love; The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult, edited by Alice Walker; My Soul is a Witness: African American Women's Spirituality; Life Notes: Personal Writings by Black Women; Birthing God: Women's Experience of the Divine; Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart; Ecological and Social Healing Multicultural Women's Voices and Global Chorus: 365 Voices On the Future of the Planet (with an Introduction by Jane Goodall). She is a American Book Award winner as senior editor of Paris Connections: African American Artists in Paris, and co-producer with Danny Glover and Damani Baker, of the award-winning documentary The House on Coco Road.
Kabir Hypolite is an African American single father, spiritualist, historian, writer, poet, artist, public health advocate, and humanitarian. He enjoys practicing Native American flute, West African Djembe, and Congolese Ngoma. Kabir lives in Oakland, California with his nineteen-year-old son, Hanif.
Loretta L.C. Brady, Ph.D., MAC is the director of Requity Labs, a community resilience and social equity research incubator and organizational consultancy at Saint Anselm College. She is a licensed clinical psychologist, writer, and Professor of psychology at Saint Anselm College. Her career includes a Fulbright fellowship (Cyprus) and a McNair fellowship (UNH) where her projects have had an international and regional impact. Her award-winning writing has appeared in New Hampshire Business Review, Business NH Magazine, and she has been a source for the New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post on issues related to inclusion, workforce development, and community resilience. Dr. Brady’s literary agent is Ladderbird Literary founder Beth Marshea. She is currently writing her debut nonfiction book, Technology Touchpoints: Parenting and Policy Making in the Digital Dystopia, which is scheduled for Winter 2023 publication with Rowman & Littlefield. She received a 2021 empowerHER award from the Manchester YWCA and on the 2021 NH 200 list published by New Hampshire Business. She lives in Manchester, NH with her husband Brian and their family of five.
Bithiah Carter (Moderator) is the President of New England Blacks in Philanthropy a non-profit that assists philanthropists and philanthropic entities to support and invest responsively in communities of color. As president, she focuses on informing, reforming, and transforming the practice of philanthropic giving. Formerly, she was the executive director of Grand Circle Foundation, senior director in the division of Community Impact at United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley, and program director at the Girls' Coalition of Greater Boston. She has also served as a consultant in the philanthropic sector, focusing on the needs of children and families in Greater Boston and surrounding areas. Before entering the non-profit sector, Ms. Carter worked for nearly ten years in the financial services industry in New York and Boston.
