Forum Network

Shawn L. Williams has been an educator for 15 years, having taught students from the primary grades to the graduate level. He has taught courses in English composition, English literature, education, and African American studies at Clark Atlanta University, Morris Brown College, and Atlanta Metropolitan College.

Laura Mayo has been working with primates for 25 years and at Zoo Atlanta for the past 19 years. She works in every capacity from keeper to her current position as Assistant Curator. While Laura has had the opportunity to work with all of the Great Apes, she has had the fortunate opportunity to be able to focus on orangutans. Laura has been working tirelessly to improve the lives of the 12 orangutans at Zoo Atlanta. Last year at the 2008 Orangutan SSP Husbandry Workshop, Laura presented the ground breaking work she is doing with AI. Laura will also be presenting at the 2009 Orangutan SSP Husbandry Workshop and giving training demonstrations.

Hank Klibanoff was born in Florence, Alabama, and grew up witnessing the evolution of race relations in the South. Those experiences, along with his 35 years as a newspaper reporter and editor, were key influences as he researched and co-wrote *The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle and the Awakening of a Nation*. The book won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for history. Klibanoff, who was managing editor of *The Atlanta Journal-Constitution* for six years until last year, is now managing editor of the *Cold Case Truth* and *Justice Project*, which uses investigative reporting to dig out the truth behind unsolved racial murders that took place during the 60-year civil rights era in the South. The project, led by the Center for Investigative Reporting, is using reporters, filmmakers, multimedia experts, public interest advocacy groups, lawyers and archivists to fill in history's huge gaps, to correct its myths and to bring justice, reconciliation and, where possible, criminal prosecution. He worked for *The Boston Globe* for three years, then for The *Philadelphia Inquirer* for 20 years, including three as the newspaper's Midwest correspondent, based in Chicago and responsible for a 12-state region.

Dr. Mendelson has been studying Neotropical amphibians and reptiles for almost 20 years, concentrating on Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Ecuador, and Peru. Most of his work has involved systematics and taxonomy including the discovery and description of about 50 new species of amphibians. Other studies have included phylogenetic studies, field ecology, and conservation. In recent years, as the crisis of global amphibian extinctions has really come to light, Dr. Mendelson has redirected much of his energy into conservation programs to help save amphibians and understand the root causes of their declines, and to conceive and implement pro-active conservation programs. This professional transition included transferring from an academic appointment to a position at a zoo. The results of his work have been published in journals such as Science, Molecular Ecology, and Journal of Herpetology.

Doris Derby is an educator and artist who was involved in the American Civil Rights Movement. She was a founding member of the New York branch of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She then traveled to Mississippi to organize an adult literacy program at Tougaloo College. While in Mississippi, she co-founded the Free Southern Theater, which aimed to educate southern African-Americans about their history and about the civil rights movement. When the FST moved to New Orleans in 1965, Derby remained in Mississippi, working as an educator, organizer, and artist until 1972.

New York-based artist Jack Whitten's experiments with painting date to the 1960s, when, inspired by Abstract Expressionism, he created dynamic works noted for their raucous colors and density of gesture, combined with topical content emotionally complex meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War. Whitten's work was included in the 1969 and 1972 Whitney Annuals, the landmark 1971 exhibition, Contemporary Black Artists in America at the Whitney Museum, Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction 1964- 1980 at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2006); and High Times Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975, organized by Independent Curators International (2006). In Summer 2007, P.S.1 MoMA Center for Contemporary Art presented a solo exhibition, combining Whitten's epic 2005 painting, 9/11 with paintings from the 1960s; The Atlanta Center for Contemporary.

Stephane Martin is a judge in France's Cour des comptes, which supervises, among other things, the way public money is spent. With a diploma from Paris' Institute of Political Studies, Martin was named auditor for the Court in 1982 upon completion of his studies at the National School for Administration. Martin was then promoted to public auditor in 1986 and appointed chief auditor in September 2000. He is Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters, Commander of the Orders of the Lion and of Merit in Senegal and Officer of the Order of Merit (Poland).

Brett Gadsden is Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. He received his Ph.D in History from Northwestern University. His book, *Victory Without Triumph: School Desegregation in Delaware*, is under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Mary Higgins Clark's first suspense novel, Where Are the Children? was published by Simon & Schuster in 1975. It became a bestseller and marked a turning point in her life and career. It is currently in its 75th edition in paperback and was re-issued in hardcover as a Simon & Schuster classic. She is a best selling author in France, where she received the Grand Prix de Literature Policiere in 1980 and The Literary Award at the 1998 Deauville Film Festival. In 2000, she was named by the French Minister of Culture "Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters." Mary Higgins Clark was chosen by Mystery Writers of America as Grand Master of the 2000 Edgar Awards. An annual Mary Higgins Clark Award sponsored by Simon & Schuster, to be given to authors of suspense fiction writing in the Mary Higgins Clark tradition, was launched by Mystery Writers of America during Edgars week in April 2001. She was the 1987 president of Mystery Writers of America and, for many years, served on their Board of Directors. In May 1988, she was Chairman of the International Crime Congress.

Frederick Douglass Opie serves as the Associate Professor of History and Director of the African Diaspora Program Marist College. Previously he was an Assistant Professor of History, focusing on Latin American and Caribbean Studies, at Morehouse College from 2000- 2003. His focus of study includes American and African history, race relations, labor history, and the cultural hybridizations of food and music. Throughout his career Professor Opie has written several books, the first of which, *Hog and Hominy *, concerns African American foodways. His second book, *Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala*, tells the story of a turn of the century frontier region with railroad and banana plantation towns populated by Black Americans, West Indians, and Latin American workers. His current book project is an examination grounded in the everyday experiences of African Americans and Latinos in metro New York City from 1959 to 2008. The book is a study of the inter-ethnic relationships which developed between African Americans and Latinos in working class and lower income communities of metro New York City.