Craig Hickman is a representative in the Maine House of Representatives. He is also a poet, actor, dancer, activist and educator.

Read a 2010 essay by Gerardo Marti about the focus on integration of African Americans into houses of worship for cultural diversity.

Peter Skerry is a political science professor at Boston College. During the 2006-07 school year, Skerry was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, where he worked on a book about how a distinct Muslim identity is emerging in the United States – influenced by the presence of Muslims from Arab, South Asian and African-American backgrounds.

The Rev. Anita Hendrix is pastor of Hunting Ridge Presbyterian Church, a multiethnic congregation in Baltimore affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Her congregation is about 60 percent Anglo, with others of African-American, Caribbean, Asian and African heritage.

Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Decatur, Ga., a congregation that’s committed to diversity and whose membership is about half white and half black. Contact pastors Nibs (Gibson) Stroupe and Caroline Leach. Together they wrote O Lord, Hold Our Hands: How a Church Thrives in a Multicultural World, and Stroupe is a co-author of Where Once We Feared Enemies: Inclusive Membership, […]

Chapel Hill Bible Church in Chapel Hill, N.C. People from more than 40 countries worship at this nondenominational congregation, which grew in part through a ministry to international college students and which is intentionally building relationships with African-American and Latino communities in that region of North Carolina. Contact David Walters, media director.

Herbert Cooper is senior pastor of People’s Church in Oklahoma City. This Assemblies of God congregation, started in 2002, draws about 1,400 people to worship on a weekend – about half black, about 40 percent white. Contact through the website.

Curé d’Ars is a Catholic congregation in Denver. This multiethnic parish, in what was once a predominantly white neighborhood, uses music and a worship style with a strong African-American flavor. The Rev. Simon Kalonga is administrator.

Pact is a national nonprofit that provides education and adoption service to children of color, their birth parents and their adoptive parents. Beth Hall is the founder and executive director.