I'm thrilled and grateful to welcome gospel singer and civil rights historian Mary D. Williams for the 25th and final conversation in the Sustaining Our Spirits series. I first heard Ms. Williams sing when I was living in Raleigh, working with the North Carolina Council of Churches on the Moral Monday movement, and I remain as deeply moved by her music as I was then. She has been the keynote speaker for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. breakfast here in Black Mountain for the last two years running, the first time I can remember a speaker being invited back for an encore the following year.

Mary's powerful voice is featured on the soundtrack of the film Blood Done Sign My Name. She has also performed at the Kennedy Center, the North Carolina State Capitol, and has been featured on National Public Radio.

Ms. Williams performs songs and narrative of the Black South. Along with her friend and colleague Dr. Timothy B. Tyson, she has taught a community-based college course, “The South in Black and White: History, Culture and Politics in the 20th Century South,” six times with total of roughly 1,025 students from North Carolina Central University, Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and at the Hayti Heritage Center in Durham.

Mary recently received her Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her knowledge of the music and the culture from which it emerged is not merely layman’s learning and experiential understanding, but is rooted in serious scholarly work.  In sharing that knowledge, she not only performs the music of deeply-rooted traditions of North Carolina, but offers context and dissects their subtleties in an accessible manner for a wide listening and learning audience.

Dr. Timothy B. Tyson, author, senior research Scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Adjunct Professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said, “Though her voice is uniquely her own, her music and her message emerge from a chorus, born in the bondage of slavery, that still speaks to our struggles against what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called the “thingification” of human beings.

In these particular days of struggle and efforts to dismantle entrenched systems of racial oppression, I am deeply grateful for the wisdom, guidance, and inspiration of Mary D. Williams.

Sustaining Our Spirits #25 - Mary D. Williams, Gospel Singer and Civil Rights Historian