This issue’s cover artist, Rommy Torrico, is the graphics and new media director for the Collier County Neighborhood Stories Project (CCNSP), based in southwest Florida.
Kornegay was drawn to study the work of the writer James Baldwin (1924-1987) through a comment made by the founder of Black liberation theology, James H. Cone, who once said that Baldwin taught him how to write.
In Small Town Cross Roads, Southerners On New Ground (SONG) explores the realities and dreams of queer people who live in small Southern towns like West Monroe.
As an Asian-American, I’m often cast as an ally rather than a stakeholder when I show up at Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations. It’s awkward to be treated like I, as a person of color, have no dog in the fight for racial equity.
As many of us enjoy the long weekend, we are called to remember Dr. King’s extraordinary role in the movement that dismantled Jim Crow segregation and secured civil rights for African Americans, as well as his broader vision for justice and equality.
In 1990, when I was a teenager, I met and began working with Walter Reeves and other members of Neighbors Network—an anti-Klan, anti-Nazi group based in Atlanta, GA. Reeves was its co-chair of education and outreach until the group’s dissolution.
We pause this day to celebrate Nelson Mandela, “Madiba,” and to reflect on what his life and the South African freedom movement has to teach us. Inevitably, this involves reflecting on our own lives and our own social justice commitments.
