Timothy B. Tyson, author of the much-acclaimed Blood Done Sign My Name and other award-winning books, is senior scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and visiting professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture in the Duke Divinity School. Blood Done Sign My Name, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, winner of the Christopher Award, the North Carolinian Book Award. It was the 2005 selection of the Carolina Summer Reading Program at UNC Chapel Hill assigned to all new undergraduate students.
Tyson’s previous book Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power won the James Rawley Prize and was co-winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize, both from the Organization of American Historians. He also co-edited, with David S. Cecelski, Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy, which won the 1999 Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America. Tyson was a John Hope Franklin Senior Fellow at the National Humanities Center in 2004-05.
Mary D. Williams, a Raleigh native noted as one of the best gospel singers in the country, will perform spirituals and gospel classics and discuss the African American religious and cultural traditions from which these songs emerged. She has been an Afro American historian studies performer for over 20 years in song and narrative of the Black South. She has traveled to more than 35 colleges and universities, more than 30 public schools, and over 100 churches and libraries.
She has performed on the soundtrack for the upcoming movie, directed by North Carolina’s own Jeb Stuart, ”Blood Done Sign My Name” and the television movie “The Wronged Man” a lifetime movie. She has starred with Mike Wiley, an African-American genius playwright and actor, in his play “Blood Done Sign My Name,” at Shafer Theatre at Duke University and has been featured on Dick Gordon’s show, “The Story,” on National Public Radio.
Tyson and Williams have taught “The South in Black and White: History, Culture and Politics in the 20th Century South,” at Hayti Heritage Center in Durham, for undergraduates from North Carolina Central University, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2008, they collaborated on “The South in Black and White” at the historic Williston School in Wilmington, North Carolina
Blair L.M. Kelley is the author of the book Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson. This award-winning book examines the struggles African Americans went through in order to resist the passage of segregation laws in the South.
In addition to being a successful author, Kelley also teaches History at North Carolina State University. She recieved her B.A. in History and Afican American Studies from the University of Viriginia, her M.A. in History from Duke University, and her Ph.D. in History from Duke University. She focuses on teaching students about African American political and social movements, African American women's history, the history of segregation, 20th century US history, comparative slavery in the African Dispora, and Black nationalism. Currently she is working on another book that examines the segregation and violence in Washington, D.C.
David Cecelski, a native of Craven County, has written numerous books. These include Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black Schools in the South, Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy, A Historian's Coast: Adventures Into the Tidewater Past and The Waterman's Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina. He edits the oral history series, "Listening to History," for the Raleigh News and Observer, and also writes a blog for the North Carolina Folklife Institute regarding the state's traditional cooking.
Cecelski received his Ph.D. from Harvard. He has shared his wealth of knowledge by teaching at Duke University, UNC at Chapel Hill, and East Carolina University. Furthermore, he is a part of the Southern Oral History Program at UNC at Chapel Hill.
James Ferguson has been nationaly recognized for his abilities in practicing law. The National Law Journal has acknowledged him as one of the top ten litigators and he has also been praised for his achievements in personal injury litigation and criminal defense by the Best Lawyers in America. Ferguson is part of the exclusive group Inner Circle of Advocates, which is limited to only the best lawyers in America.
Ferguson has traveled to many places sharing his knowledge of trial advocacy, including London, Cambridge, and Stratford-on-Avon, England. He has also taught at Harvard, North Carolina Central University, and the National Institute for Trial Advocacy. Although he currently concentraes on medical malpractice, personal injury, and products liability, he is also well known for his ability to win civil rights and criminal cases.
