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Caryl Phillips is a British writer with a Caribbean background, best known as a novelist. He is now professor at Yale University and a visiting professor at Barnard College of Columbia University. He has tackled themes on the African slave trade from many angles. His work has been recognized by numerous awards including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1993 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Crossing the River and the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book award for A Distant Shore.

Gail Snowden heads the Community Investment Group (CIG) within FleetBoston Financial and is a member of the company's Leadership Advisory Group, comprised of the top 36 executives. She directs and invests the bank's resources into low and moderate-income communities through the delivery of innovative financial services, wealth and equity creation programs. Ms. Snowden oversees a diverse group of business units that includes Fleet Community Bank Small Business Services, Fleet Development Ventures, established as the first urban investment bank in America chartered by a commercial bank, and Commercial Real Estate Lending. Recognition for FleetBoston Financial's approach to low and moderate-income markets has included winning the 1998 Presidential Ron Brown Award and a profile on Ms. Snowden in* Fortune* magazine's March 1998 feature article, "Banking in Urban America". Most recently, Ms. Snowden was appointed President of the FleetBoston Financial Foundation, one of the nation's largest financial services philanthropic organizations and named Outstanding Corporate Philanthropist in 1999. In this additional role, she will set strategy at an international, national and regional level for Fleet's $25 million philanthropy portfolio, and will be responsible for all charitable giving at the Bank. She is a recipient of numerous awards including: the Abigail Adams Award (2001), honorary Doctor of Public Service degrees from Simmons College (2001) and Bridgewater State College (1997), an honorary Doctor of Law degree from Babson College (1998), Doctor of Humane Letters from Emmanuel College (1998), the 1996 YWCA Academy of Women Achievers Award and the 1992 SBA Small Business Minority Advocate of the Year. She was selected as an Outstanding Member of both the Boston Urban Bankers Forum and the Urban Financial Services Coalition (formerly the National Association of Urban Bankers). She also received the YMCA Black Achievers Award, the Simmons College Alumnae Achievement Award and the New England Women's Leadership Award. A frequent local and national public speaker, she was named one of the nation's Top Business and Professional Woman by *Dollars and Sense* magazine and one of 50 African-American Women at the top in corporate America in the March 2001 issue of *Ebony *magazine. Ms. Snowden is a 1967 graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe College and earned an MBA from Simmons Graduate School of Management in 1978. She currently resides in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

From 1983 until 2004, Jenkins-Scott served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Dimock Community Health Center in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Prior to joining Dimock, she held several positions with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Departments of Public and Mental Health. As a community leader, public health advocate and innovative administrator, she has been a nationally known figure for nearly thirty years. Jenkins-Scott has served on many professional, civic and community boards and committees. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of The Boston Foundation, the Kennedy Library Foundation and Museum, the Boston Plan for Excellence, WGBH, the National Board of Jumpstart and the Council on Social Work Education. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Century Bank and Trust Company and the Tufts Health Plan. In April 2007, Boston's Mayor Thomas M. Menino selected Jenkins-Scott to Co-Chair his School Readiness Action Planning Team, charged with developing specific strategies to prevent the achievement gap among the next generation of students. Jenkins-Scott has received numerous awards and citations including the 2005 Associated Industries of Massachusetts Legacy of Leadership award, 2004 Pinnacle Lifetime Achievement Award from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and the 2004 Distinguished Alumni Award from Boston University.

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*.