Jonathan C. Smith is an assistant professor of American studies at St. Louis University and is researching African-American funerary customs.  

Charlton McIlwain is Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is the author of Death in Black and White: Death, Ritual and Family Ecology (Hampton Press, 2003), which examines African-American funeral practices.

Jessica Koth is public relations manager for the National Funeral Directors Association, an organization of mostly independent funeral home operators, based in Brookfield, Wis. She can discuss the influence that the needs of different ethnic and religious groups have had on funeral directors and their services.

Melissa Harris-Perry is a professor of political science at Tulane University in New Orleans, host of MSNBC’s “Melissa Harris-Perry” and author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2004).

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee works to stop discrimination against Muslims.

Richard L. Wood is director of the Religious Studies Program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He wrote the book Faith in Action: Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and contributed the essay “Religion, Faith-Based Organizing, and the Struggle for Justice” for the book Handbook of the Sociology of Religion (Cambridge […]

Theodore Walker Jr. is associate professor of ethics and society at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He wrote the book Empower the People: Social Ethics for the African-American Church, about African-American resources for a more inclusive liberation theology.  

Helen A. Regis is assistant professor of geography and anthropology at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She co-wrote the book Charitable Choices: Religion, Race, and Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era (New York University Press, 2003).

John P. Bartkowski is a professor of sociology at Mississippi State University. He has conducted research on religion and families and can speak about how teens’ religiosity affects their involvement in risky behaviors, such as using drugs, and their social relationships, particularly dating patterns. Bartkowski is working on a book about Mormon teen religiosity and another […]