Valerie Bridgeman is a poet, dancer, and performer, and she serves as a visiting associate professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. She also founded the WomanPreach! ministry. She contributed a “preaching reflection” about the death of Michael Brown to Odyssey Networks.  

Billy Michael Honor is a minister, theologian, and writer who currently serves as pastor and head of staff of New Life Presbyterian Church in College Park, Georgia. His professional and research focus includes religious criticism, African American religious thought, and public theology. He contributed a “preaching reflection” about the death of Michael Brown to Odyssey Networks.

Eric Barreto is an associate professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary. Among works he has authored, Barreto has written on ethnicity and race and their intersection with the Bible. He also contributed a “preaching reflection” about the death of Michael Brown to Odyssey Networks.  

Rabbi Aryeh Cohen is a professor of Rabbinic Literature at American Jewish University. Rabbi Cohen has written about link between the Black Lives Matter movement and the meaning of Passover.

Rabbi Jesse Olitzky serves at Congregation Beth El in South Orange, N.J. He has written about the link between the death of Eric Garner and the Jewish obligation to speak out for social justice.

J. Kameron Carter is an associate professor of systematic theology and black church studies at Duke Divinity School. He recently participated in a panel on Black Lives Matter hosted by the school.

Leah Gunning Francis is associate dean for contextual education and assistant professor of Christian education at Eden Theological Seminary. She is based in St. Louis and was present in Ferguson, Mo., during the unrest in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death.

The Rev. Ashlee Wiest-Laird is pastor at First Baptist JP in Jamaica Plain, Mass. She traveled to Ferguson, Mo., to protest and spoke about the experience on Boston Public Radio.

Shannen Dee Williams is a writer and an assistant professor of United States and African-American history at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She has called for Catholic theologians to remember the lives of black women in the Black Lives Matter movement.