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Ellen has been a professional archaeologist for 22 years in New England and a Boston City Archaeologist for the last 12 years. She also works as a live-in caretaker for Boston's oldest house, the Blake House, circa 1661.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 9, 1934, Sonia Sanchez is best known as a poet and playwright. Starting her legacy in the 1960s, Sanchez gained recognition for her controversial poetry which expresses her feelings on the treatment of African Americans in the United States. She has taught at various universities, recently retiring from Temple University, where she was a Laura H. Carnell Professor of English. Best known for her poetry collections, including *Homegirls & Handgrenades*, Sanchez has received numerous awards over her career and inspired many with her genuine love of teaching and writing. She currently lives and writes in Philadelphia.

Raymond Hammond is the senior pastor of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. Hammond is the president of the Ten Point Coalition, an ecumenical group of clergy and lay leaders working to mobilize the greater Boston community around issues affecting black and Latino youth--especially those at-risk for violence, drug abuse, and other destructive behaviors. He is also the Executive Director of Bethel's Youth Intervention Project; and a member of several church and community boards, including the Black Ministerial Alliance Executive Committee, the Youth Ministry Development Project Advisory Board, the Boston Plan for Excellence, Catholic Charities of Boston, Minuteman Council (Boston, MA) of the Boy Scouts of America, City Year of Boston Advisory Committee, and the United Way Success by Six Leadership Council. Finally, he is a member of the Advisory Board of the Alliance for Marriage, a diverse, non-partisan coalition composed of civil rights and religious leaders, as well as national legal experts, that is dedicated to restoring a culture of intact families founded upon marriage in America.

Alexander Kronemer is a writer, lecturer and documentary producer focusing on religious diversity, Islam, and cross-cultural understanding. He has a Master's Degree in Theological Studies from Harvard University, where his research concentrated on the philosophy of religion and comparative religion. In 1996, he was awarded a Joseph J. Malone Fellowship for Middle East and Islamic Studies. He is the co-founder of Unity Productions Foundation, a non-profit corporation whose mission is to help bring peace through the media by creating better understanding of Islam and the world's other faiths and spiritual traditions. He was creator and co-producer of the popular PBS documentary *Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet*.

Although Bayard Rustin was one of the most important leaders of the American civil rights movement from the advent of its modern period in the 1950s until well into the 1980s, his name was seldom mentioned; he received comparatively little press or media attention, and others' names were usually much more readily associated with the movement than his was. His was a behind-the-scenes role that, for all its importance, never garnered Rustin the public acclaim he may have deserved. Rustin's homosexuality and early communist affiliation probably meant that the importance of his contribution to the civil rights and peace movements would never be acknowledged. However, fairness demands that the extent of Rustin's work receive a fair public reception. Bayard Taylor Rustin was born on March 17, 1912, to Florence Rustin, one of eight children of Julia and Janifer Rustin of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Florence's child had been born out of wedlock; the father was Archie Hopkins. Julia and Janifer decided to raise young Bayard as their son, the youngest of the large Rustin family. Julia Rustin had been raised a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and even though she attended the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the denomination of her husband, she impressed on the children she raised certain Quaker principles: the equality of all human beings before God, the vital need for nonviolence, the importance of dealing with everyone with love and respect.

Michael Wolfe is a poet, author, and the President and Executive Producer of Unity Productions Foundation. He is also a frequent lecturer on Islamic issues at universities across the United States including Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, SUNY Buffalo, and Princeton. He holds a degree in Classics from Wesleyan University.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. King was an American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States and he is frequently referenced as a human rights icon today. A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in US history. In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non violent means. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and opposing the Vietnam War, both from a religious perspective. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. national holiday in 1986.

Professor de la Garza combines interests in political behavior and public policy throughout his career. Currently he is directing studies on immigrant incorporation, Latinos and U. S. foreign policy and Latino voting patterns. He has also chaired a series of seminars on Latinos and foreign policy that have emphasized increasing Hispanic involvement in international affairs. He served as Vice-President of the American Political Science Association and received the Life-time Achievement Award of the Committee on the Status of Latinos in the Profession of the American Political Science Association in 1993. Professor de la Garza has edited, co-edited and co-authored numerous books including: *The Future of the Voting Rights Act*; *Muted Voices: Latinos and the 2000 Election*; *Sending Money Home: Hispanic Remittances and Community Development*; *Latinos and U. S. Foreign Policy: Lobbying for the Homeland?*; *Bridging the Border: Transforming Mexico-U. S. Relations*; *At the Crossroads: Mexican and U. S. Immigration Policy*; *Awash in the Mainstream: Latinos and the 1996 Elections*; *Ethnic Ironies: Latinos and the 1992 Elections*; *Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban Perspectives on American Politics*; *Barrio Ballots: Latinos and the 1990 Elections and The Chicano Political Experience*. Professor de la Garza has also published in leading professional journals such as *the American Journal of Political Science*, *Latin American Research Review*, *Social Science Quarterly*, and *International Migration Review*.

Patricia Gndara is a professor of education at the University of California-Davis. In addition to being associate director for the University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute, she is also a co-director for Policy Analysis in California Education, a University of California/Stanford University policy research consortium. Gndara's research interests include equity and access in education and the education of linguistic and ethnic minority groups. Her most recent publication is *Over the Ivy Walls: The Educational Mobility of Low-income Chicanos*. Gndara is currently conducting a study of classroom teachers and their perceptions of the challenges they face in teaching English learners. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from UCLA. Gndara has directed education research for the California State Assembly, and served as Commissioner for Postsecondary Education for California.

John Edgar Wideman is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His articles on Malcolm X, Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, Michael Jordan, Emmett Till, Thelonius Monk, and women's professional basketball have appeared in* The New Yorker*, *Vogue*, *Esquire*, *Emerge*, and *the New York Times Magazine*. He was awarded a Benjamin Franklin scholarship by the University of Pennsylvania, where he not only won a creative writing prize but also earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Matching his scholastic achievements with his athletic ones, he won All-Ivy League status as a forward on the basketball team and successfully competed on the track team. In 1963, he graduated with a B.A. in English, and won a Rhodes scholarship to study philosophy at Oxford University's New College. Returning to the United States in 1966, Wideman spent a year as a Kent Fellow at the University of lowa's Writers' Workshop, where he completed his first novel, *A Glance Away*, in 1967. His other novels include *Two Cities*,* Hurry Home*, *The Lynchers*, *Hiding Place*, *Sent for You Yesterday*, *Philadelphia Fire*, and *The Cattle Killing*. He is the author of a memoir, *Brothers and Keepers*. Wideman is the only writer to have been awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice-- once in 1984 for his novel *Sent for You Yesterday* and again in 1990 for *Philadelphia Fire*. In 1990, he also received the American Book Award for Fiction. He was awarded the Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction in 1991 and the MacArthur Award in 1993.

Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher. Alexander has degrees from Yale University and Boston University and completed her PhD in English at the University of Pennsylvania. Most recently, she composed and delivered "Praise Song for the Day" for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The poem has recently been published as a small book from Graywolf Press. In addition, she has published five books of poems: *The Venus Hottentot* (1990), *Body of Life* (1996), *Antebellum Dream Book* (2001), *American Sublime* (2005), which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and was one of the American Library Associations Notable Books of the Year; and her first young adult collection (co-authored with Marilyn Nelson), *Miss Crandalls School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color* (2008 Connecticut Book Award). Her two collections of essays are *The Black Interior* (2004) and *Power and Possibility *(2007), and her play, *Diva Studies*, was produced at the Yale School of Drama.