Marcia Dyson and Crystal DeGregory on Living Your Best Life with Genma Holmes

Living Your Best Life Radio with Genma Holmes celebrates the strength, courage, and boldness of women who embrace life to the fullest and have not let others "no" determine their destiny in life. Join us to hear the from women who are seasoned with success and who believe in mentoring other women to become trailblazers as they empower, inspire, and motivate us to live our BEST life.

On Saturday, April 5, 2014, join us to hear from trailblazers who believe  "There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you." Dr. Marcia Dyson, CEO and Founder of  Women Global Initiative, and Dr. Crystal DeGregory, Founder and Executive Editor of HBCUstory, will share their stories and passion for uplifting women and our global community through education, justice, equality, and economic empowerment.

ColorComm's Chloe Louvouezo, Harriett Fulbright, Dr. Marcia Dyson, Lauren W. Wilson and Amber Allen

Dr. Dyson will discuss why it is imperative to promote, inspire, and support the future leaders of the world and why she believes every citizen is a leader.  Dr. Dyson will share lessons learned from her encounters with world leaders and the role of the business community plays in sustaining nations for the next generation. Dr. Dyson will also share about the C2 Conference that will be held in August 2014.

HBCUstory 2012 Honorees

Dr. DeGregory will share the need for HBCUstory, founded in 2012, as an advocacy initiative that is preserving, presenting, and promoting inspiring stories of the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) community’s past and present, for our future. She will share about her latest body of work  “The Relationships of Revolution: Martin Luther King, Jr., the Civil Rights Movement and Political Change in the Bahamas”and the upcoming 2nd Annual HBCUstory Symposium that will be held in Washington, D.C.

Tune into 760AM in the Middle Tennessee Region, on Tune In, streaming live online at UStream.TV, and on military bases on Saturdays from 9:00-10:00am CST. 


More About WGI

Women's Global Initiative (WGI) works closely with a network of corporate, government, university, faith-based, and other partners. Through these partnerships, we create and support innovative new programs that help extend effective existing efforts of women. We are an exclusive membership club, to inspire, inform, and engaged members to promote intercultural, political, and religious dialogue though a unique combination of online and global events.

WGI serves and supports women from every walk of life. The hierarchy of economic empowerment, beginning at the lowest levels of household and community control, is still globally genderized in favor of men. This is a form of structural discrimination that ultimately undermines national interests
and economic possibilities.

Although women are at the center of the household, they are too often disempowered. Investment in women's individual agency balances decision making within the household, resulting in a positive systemic impact upon society.

We believe that efforts toward an equitable national economy must be mirrored in the household. Therefore, gender-based exclusionary elements must be corrected at that most basic level of social organization.

WGI is committed to solving the underlying problems that threaten, undermine, and impair women's ability to lead productive and fulfilling lives. We focus on ameliorating the economic and socio-cultural barriers that limit women's opportunities. We dedicate our resources toward lowering these barriers wherever we encounter them within the communities we serve.

More About ColorComm Conference (C2)

C2 is the ultimate business conference for women of color in communications. Innovative programs, presented by the industry’s top practitioners and thought leaders, will address key issues and predict future trends.

Unlike many professional conferences with thousands in attendance, C2 is an intimate group of approximately 300 multicultural, professional women. That means everyone can identify with common experiences and challenges and everyone is accessible. With access comes action, the kind of action you need to advance your career, build your business and enhance your personal development.

C2 is for you if you are a woman of color in the vast field of communications. This includes Public Relations, Media Relations, Corporate Communications, Advertising, Journalism, Broadcast, Consulting, Social Media as well as Entrepreneurs, Educators and more. C2 is for you if you want to connect with and learn from the best and the brightest.

More About HBCUstory 

Founded in 2012, HBCUstory, Inc. is an advocacy initiative, preserving, presenting and promoting inspiring stories of the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) community’s past and present, for our future.

Each and everyday, the HBCU community is writing the HBCUstory. We have fond memories of administrators, faculty, staff and fellow alumni–of people who believed in us and made us believe in ourselves.

We who believe in the mission and vision of HBCUs must leverage our HBCU stories as more than mere memories. Our memories must serve as compelling evidence for the future of these’s educational, cultural and social treasures.

More About HBCUstory 2nd Annual Symposium

Photo Credits: HBCUstory, ColorComm, Dr. Dyson and Dr. deGregory

HBCUstory Part 2 on Living Your Best Life with Genma Holmes

Join Living Your Best Life with Genma Holmes as we profile organizations and leaders who lead by example. With extraordinary acts of kindness and charitable giving that help countless lives daily, these organizations and leaders embody "Be the change you want to see in the world".

Throughout 2013 listeners will hear from presidents of organizations who are global change agents. We will also hear from CEOs of social enterprise businesses who are changing communities and college educators who are taking their students out of the classroom and into surrounding neighborhoods to learn and serve others.

 On Saturday, April 6, 2013 we will continue the dialogue with Dr. Crystal deGregory, founding editor of HBCUstory. Listen as the lively discussion from last week pick up where we left off. Updates on presenters, along with perspectives on open and closed campuses, the telling of the HBCUstory in places other than HBCU zoned areas of the community, and navigating the politics of higher education will be shared.

Hear why the HBCUstory Symposium will be an opportunity for young professors and doctoral candidates to gain value exposure for presenting their publications and a reminder for young academia to not become complacent in their careers as educators and mentors to the next generation.

Dr. deGregory will also share more insights from her dissertation: Raising a Nonviolent Army: Four Nashville Black Colleges and the Century Long Struggle for Civil Rights, 1830s-1930s, Vanderbilt University 2011.

Online registration can be found at HBCUstory Symposium.

Living Your Best Life, a radio show that empowers, inspires and motivates one to live their BEST life, can heard on 760 AM in the Middle-Tennessee Region, military bases, and streamed live on U-Stream.TV from 9-10AM CST. This show will also be aired on WTST, a member of the HBCU radio network.

More About HBCUstory 

Founded in 2012, HBCUstory, Inc. is a nonprofit advocacy initiative,  preserving, presenting and promoting inspiring stories of the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) community’s past and present, for our future.

Each and everyday, the HBCU community is writing the HBCUstory. We have fond memories of administrators, faculty, staff and fellow alumni–of people who believed in us and made us believe in ourselves.

We who believe in the mission and vision of HBCUs must leverage our HBCU stories as more than mere memories. They serve as compelling evidence for the future of these’s educational, cultural and social treasures.

At HBCUstory, we’re making memories matter.

HBCUstory Keynote Speaker Michael Sorrell, President of Paul Quinn College

Micheal J. Sorrell is the 34th president of Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Texas and is the reigning “HBCU Male President of the Year.” Under his trans-formative leadership, Paul Quinn demolished fifteen abandoned buildings, achieved full accreditation with the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS) and partnered with PepsiCo to transform its football field into the two-acre “WE Over Me Farm.” As Paul Quinn’s president, Sorrell is masterfully branding the college’s dynamic “Quinnite Nation,” which is experiencing one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of higher education.

More About HBCUstory's  Founding Editor, Crystal deGregory, Ph.d 

A native of Freeport, Bahamas, Dr. Crystal A. deGregory received her doctoral degree in history from Vanderbilt University in May 2011. Entitled "Raising a Nonviolent Army: Four Nashville Black Colleges and the Century-Long Struggle for Civil Rights, 1830s-1930s," her dissertation focuses on the role of American Baptist College, Fisk University, Meharry Medical College and Tennessee State University and their students in the struggle for equality, justice and civil rights in Nashville, Tennessee.

Crystal received her undergraduate training at the historic Fisk University. A proud Fiskite, the school's small but mighty faculty nurtured her love of history as both a passion and profession. In May 2005, she was awarded a master's degree from Vanderbilt for her thesis "The Color Divide in the Emergent Black Man's Party: The Political Strivings of the Bahamian Colored and Black Middle Class in the Progressive Liberal Party, 1953-1963."

A former fellow of the National Visionary Heritage Fellows Program of the National Visionary Leadership Project, her research on Drs. McDonald and Jamye Coleman Williams was included in the 2004 monograph, A Wealth of Wisdom: Legendary African American Elders Speak. In addition to being among the inaugural fellows of Vanderbilt's Center for Nashville Studies (in conjunction with Vanderbilt's College of Arts and Sciences), Crystal was the recipient of the Bahamas Government Graduate Scholarship and Lyford Cay Graduate Student awards. In 2010, she also won the alternate award for the TIAA-CREF Ruth Simms Hamilton Research Fellowship.

Crystal believes deeply in the unique mission of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and to this end, proudly serves on the faculty of Tennessee State University's department of history, geography and political science. A regular contributor to HBCU Digest, she is also the founder and executive editor of HBCUstory.com, an online advocacy center presenting inspiring stories of the HBCU community's past and present, for our future.

Her work has been published in Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture (2011), Tennessee Historical Quarterly (2010), Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience (2009), National African American Biography (2008), Notable Black American Men II (2007), and Encyclopedia of African American Business (2006). She has forthcoming works in The Tennessee State University Journal and in A Single Garment of Destiny: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Globalization of an Ethical Ideal, Lewis V. Baldwin and Paul Dekar, editors; she will also serve as editor for Emancipation and the Fight for Freedom, the sixth volume in the 12-part series, Tennessee in the Civil War: The Best of the Tennessee Historical Quarterly.

Photo credits: Genma Holmes, Paul Quinn College, and HBCUstory

HBCUstory on Living Your Best Life with Genma Holmes

Join Living Your Best Life with Genma Holmes as we profile organizations and leaders who lead by example. With extraordinary acts of kindness and charitable giving that help countless lives daily, these organizations and leaders embody "Be the change you want to see in the world".

Throughout 2013 listeners will hear from presidents of organizations who are global change agents. We will also hear from CEOs of social enterprise businesses who are changing communities and college educators who are taking their students out of the classroom and into surrounding neighborhoods to learn and serve others.

Join us on Saturday, March 30, 2013, to hear from the founding editor of HBCUstory,  Dr. Crystal deGregory. Listen to Dr. deGregory share her passion for chronicling the history, the struggles, the challenges, and the beauty of the nation's Historically Black Universities and Colleges. deGregory will share the traditional roles of HBCUs as well as the relevancy of HBCUs as they adapt to the changing demographics of our country and financial challenges. deGregory  will discuss the culture of academia, young academics need for mentoring, and why HBCU institutions must get better at telling their story beyond the HBCU community.

Tune in to hear share about the stellar line up of speakers of the Inaugural HBCUstory Symposium and it's keynote speaker, President Sorrell of Paul Quinn College. Listen to how  her share how her dream is now reality with the support of the Nashville Public Library and why the symposium will be a safe environment to exchange ideas and share concerns that will collect “Inspiring Stories of the Past and Present, For Our Future.”

Part 1 will air this weekend.

 Living Your Best Life, a radio show that empowers, inspires and motivates one to live their BEST life, can heard on 760 AM in the Middle-Tennessee Region, military bases, and streamed live on U-Stream.TV from 9-10AM CST. This show will also be aired on WTST, a member of the HBCU radio network.

More About HBCUStory

 Founded in 2012, HBCUstory, Inc. is a nonprofit advocacy initiative,  preserving, presenting and promoting inspiring stories of the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) community’s past and present, for our future.

Each and everyday, the HBCU community is writing the HBCUstory. We have fond memories of administrators, faculty, staff and fellow alumni–of people who believed in us and made us believe in ourselves.

We who believe in the mission and vision of HBCUs must leverage our HBCU stories as more than mere memories. They serve as compelling evidence for the future of these’s educational, cultural and social treasures.

At HBCUstory, we’re making memories matter.

Symposium Announcement

Nashville-Based HBCUSTORY Announces Distinguished HBCU President as Keynote for Inaugural Symposium
Symposium will also feature 15 scholars from across the nation

NASHVILLE, TN – March 18, 2013: Nashville-based HBCUSTORY Inc. announces that Michael J. Sorrell, Esq., president of Paul Quinn College in Dallas, will serve as keynote speaker for the inaugural HBCUSTORY Symposium, scheduled Saturday, April 27, from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Main Nashville Public Library at 615 Church Street.

Presented in partnership with the Nashville Public Library and the Nashville Public Library Foundation, the 2013 HBCUSTORY Symposium, themed “Inspiring Stories of the Past and Present, For Our Future” will also feature fifteen scholars from across the nation. These academicians and practitioners will share original research on emerging topics in the fields of history, information science, fundraising, partnerships, LBGTQ studies, athletics and wellness.

“This historic event provides an opportunity for members of the HBCU community to support positive stories reflecting the great work HBCUs have done and are doing,” said Dr. Crystal A. deGregory, HBCUSTORY Founder and Executive Director. “Our HBCUSTORY Symposium encourages HBCUs to craft their own stories and encourages academicians to consider HBCUs as subjects worthy of serious study. And, perhaps, even more importantly, the Symposium compels HBCU supporters to take an active role in ensuring a bright future for these giants in the pantheon of American educational history.”

Named by HBCU Digest as its “2012 HBCU Male President of the Year,” Sorrell is leading Paul Quinn College into one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of higher education, which includes the college being named by its peers as HBCU Digest’s “2011 HBCU of the Year” and being selected as a finalist for the 2013 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.

“This type of symposium is long overdue,” Sorrell said. “Kudos to Dr. deGregory for creating a venue for scholarly discourse around a topic about which so many of us are passionate. Paul Quinn College and I will always support efforts that are committed to analyzing, debating, and celebrating both the history and the future of HBCUs.”

To register for the 2013 Symposium, please visit http://www.hbcustorysymposium.eventbrite.com. Registration is required. Limited on-site registration is available.
To learn more about HBCUSTORY, visit us online at http://www.hbcustory.com/

HBCUstory Storytellers

FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE EDITOR/HISTORY & CULTURE EDITOR
Crystal A. deGregory, Ph.D. is a graduate of the historic Fisk University ’03. She received her master’s and doctoral degrees in history from Vanderbilt University and now teaches in Tennessee State University’s department of history, geography and political science. Follow her on twitter at @HBCUstorian or contact her via email at cadegregory@HBCUstory.com.

MANAGING EDITOR/HEALTH & WELLNESS EDITOR
E. Clare Stewart, MSPH is graduate of Fisk University ’05 and Meharry Medical College, School of Graduate Studies and Research. She currently serves as the Community Coordinator for the HBCU Wellness Project at Fisk University. Follow her on twitter at @EClareStewart or contact her via email at ecstewart@HBCUstory.com.

Photo credits: Genma Holmes