David Chappell is associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas and a historian of the American South, the civil rights movement and race relations in the United States. He is the author of A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (University of North Carolina, 2004).

Lorraine Blackman, associate professor at the Indiana University School of Social Work, is director of the African American Family Life Education Program, an educational, research and service project that teaches family life skills.

Cheryl R. Cooper is Chief Operating Officer of the YWCA USA. She was formerly executive director of the National Council of Negro Women in Washington, D.C., which seeks to improve the quality of life for African-American women and their families.

The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III is head pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, N.Y. Butts chairs the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS.

Christine D. Chapman wrote (with Stephen C. Rasor) Black Power From the Pew: Laity Connecting Congregations and Communities (Pilgrim, 2007). She is an adjunct professor at Georgia State University and at the Interdenominational Theological Center.

Stephen C. Rasor wrote (with Christine D. Chapman) Black Power from the Pew: Laity Connecting Congregations and Communities (Pilgrim, 2007). Rasor is a professor of sociology of religion at the Interdenominational Theological Center, where he directs the doctor of ministry program.

Martha Simmons is publisher of the nondenominational preaching and ministry journal The African American Pulpit, and she is an associate minister at Rush Memorial United Church of Christ in Atlanta. Simmons has preached throughout the country for 20 years in a variety of ministerial capacities and has her finger on the pulse of trends, changes and issues […]

Harold Dean Trulear, senior pastor of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Twin Oaks, Pa., is an expert on religion and social policy. He is associate professor of religious education at Howard University and is ordained in both the Progressive National Baptist Convention and American Baptist Churches in the USA.

Otis Moss III is pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He espouses Black theology and advocates efforts to reach Black youth in the city. A poet, he wrote Redemption in a Red Light District: Messages of Hope, Healing, and Empowerment.