Topic: Understanding Perspective and Unity through an Analysis of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Dr. Kendric L. Coleman Professor of English & African American Studies Valdosta State University Department of English -- I will be talking about lessons we can learn about the importance of working together through an analysis of the lives of these two great historical leaders. -- A specialist in African American Literature, Dr. Kendric Coleman earned his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University-Baton Rouge. Serving in higher education for the last 20 years, he is a Full Professor in the Department of English at Valdosta State University where he teaches World Literature, American Literature, African American Literature, and African Literature. His research challenges the assumptions that undergird the construction of race and gender-politics through interdisciplinary interrogation. He has published and presented scholarly works critiquing black masculinity on Richard Wright, Nathan McCall, Frederick Douglass, Claude Brown, and James Earl Hardy. Dr. Coleman’s favorite quote is by the late, renown African American historian Dr. John Henrik Clark: “I think every person that calls themselves a leader, a preacher, a policy maker of any kind should ask and answer the question in his own life time, how will my people stay on this earth? How will they be educated? How will they be schooled? How will they be housed? And how will they be defended? The answer to these questions will create the concept of enduring nationhood because it creates the concept of enduring responsibility."

Allen Cheney and Ryan and Smith have started a production company in Thomasville. They have just finished a feature-length film based on the book Tiger Rising. They will bring to us insights from their careers in filmmaking and their particular experiences in Thomasville.