Legendary Woman: An Interview with Michelle McClain Walters

Legendary Woman: An Interview with Michelle McClain Walters

As more women than ever continue to move into positions of leadership and all women seek their purposes it is important to have role models from Scripture to help inspire and encourage us. Michelle McClain Walters has identified not only role models, but Biblical principles that can be learned from their stories to help women and men discover and walk in God’s calling for their lives. UrbanFaith sat down with Michelle to talk about her new book Legendary Woman: Partnering with God to Become the Heroine of Your Own Story, which captures the wisdom and encouragement we need for this moment. The full interview is linked above and more about the book is below.

In today’s times of women go-getters, entrepreneurs and bosses, Michelle McClain Walters uses her faith and God’s promises to motivate women to their calling! The book highlights the legendary women who aren’t just those in traditional powerhouse positions in business, finance or politics, but also the everyday women — the single mom, the prayer leader, the stay-at-home wife— who choose to say yes to God, are also indeed, legendary. She also shares the twelve characteristics of a legendary woman,and challenges women to identify their defining moments—those moments when your destiny intersects with an epic need within your family, community, nation, or your world—and be willing to say yes to the legendary role God has uniquely fashioned for them. 

Masters of the Air x UrbanFaith

Masters of the Air x UrbanFaith

UrbanFaith Editor Allen Reynolds had the opportunity to talk to Dee Rees, one of the directors of the hit Apple TV+ series Masters of the Air which featured the Tuskeegee Airmen and fighter pilots during World War II. He talked with Dee about what it was like to tell share this piece of history with the world.

Allen

Thank you so much for sharing with us the Urban Faith. And I would have to say that it was really moving and a pleasure to watch these episodes of Masters of the Air, especially episode 8 you got to take part in directing. My first question, Dee, is looking at that second to last episode, why was it important in the midst of a series that focused a lot around the Fighting 100th squadron to tell the story of the Tuskegee Airmen for you? Why was that an important choice?

Dee Rees

Sure. It was important to tell the story of the Ninety-Nine Fighting Squadron, because they are what enabled the 100th to be successful. So, it was important to kind of get that part of the story in front of audiences and know that these men were also masters of the air.

Allen

Absolutely, they were. Can you talk a little bit about why you chose to not just show them as heroes, but also show them as folks who were trying to overcome a lot in the process?

Dee

Right, so in episode seven, we’re a lot, the story is set in Stahlglof 3, and so our guys are literally grounded, you know? And so without the gear, without the planes, without the machines, they’re really forced to confront themselves and confront the things in them that are gonna have to change to not just escape, but to make their lives post-war better. And so, it was good to really get into the friendships and just kind of get into the [humanity] and the struggles. They’re gonna have to like vow to be like better people. I think when they’re [not] flying it forced the characters to literally sit. Sit out of the action and to relent. And in that [waiting], being able to relent to circumstance, becoming like better men and stronger men and really thinking about having to change their lives. And the same for the Tuskegee airmen in that camp. I wanted to show that that was the first time that a lot of their white colleagues had been in proximity with black people and a forced to kind of confront those own demons within themselves and decide who they’re gonna be.

Allen

Can you talk about why it’s important that we got to see them make that bridge and kind of what that speaks to in the midst of that larger World War II context and for us learning that history.

Dee

Yeah, so for Megan and Jefferson [The Tuskegee airmen], they’re acutely aware that they’re not just fighting this battle abroad, they know that they’re gonna have to go home to another battle, you know? In this fight, they have allies and that’s the way they’re able to survive. And it’s kind of getting through the idea that they’re gonna need those same allies to fight their battle at home. And in this small way, we start to suggest that maybe they’ll start to kind of find those [allies] in these men who’ve served together. It kind of highlights the bravery and courage of these airmen who are fighting for a country who’s not necessarily gonna fight for them. It heightens their struggle and then contextualizes it versus the other the members of the 100th who are, you know, caught up in their own worlds. It kind of broadened their kind of outlook to say, “wow, look at these guys who have this bigger struggle.”

Allen

Absolutely. So last question for you, Dee. What are some takeaways or some lessons you would want young folks to hear from [Masters of the Air]?

Dee

I would kind of go to some of the mottos of the fighting squad themselves: “aim high and expect to win,” you know? Even though, you can’t change the weather, like one of my favorite lines, like “you can’t change the weather, but that just teaches you how to fly better and be better pilots.” And in that way, the Tuskegee airmen had to become better pilots because they were up against winds that they couldn’t change.

UrbanFaith x Sow and Tell

UrbanFaith x Sow and Tell

Denya & Cellus Hamilton were inspired by the idea of being faithful to God while working in the marketplace. But they didn’t see a space for Black & Brown people to talk about faith and works. So they created one. Sow & Tell is their organization devoted to creating community and equipping leaders to live out their faith and be impactful in their work life. Their annual conference titled “There Will Be Fruit” on April 6, 2024 will be the largest yet in NYC as they welcome professionals and creatives of color to engage learn and connect. You can register here. UrbanFaith sat down with Denya & Cellus to talk about the conference and why they are passionate about integrating faith and works. More about the conference is below.

Like the tax collector and fishermen, Jesus found many of us while we were working—But instead of commanding us to shift careers, He altered what we’d fish for. And this is why There Will Be Fruit exists.

Join 150+ Christian marketplace leaders of color in NYC on Saturday April 6, 2024 at the only Faith and Work conference for the Black and Brown community, known as There Will Be Fruit.

Expect panels, breakout sessions, network opportunities, vendors, a celebration mixer, and more!

The women who stood with Martin Luther King Jr. and sustained a movement for social change

The women who stood with Martin Luther King Jr. and sustained a movement for social change

Women listen during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Vicki Crawford, Morehouse College

Historian Vicki Crawford was one of the first scholars to focus on women’s roles in the civil rights movement. Her 1993 book, “Trailblazers and Torchbearers,” dives into the stories of female leaders whose legacies have often been overshadowed.

Today she is the director of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection, where she oversees the archive of his sermons, speeches, writings and other materials. Here, she explains the contributions of women who influenced King and helped to fuel some of the most significant campaigns of the civil rights era, but whose contributions are not nearly as well known.

An activist in her own right

Coretta Scott King is often remembered as a devoted wife and mother, yet she was also a committed activist in her own right. She was deeply involved with social justice causes before she met and married Martin Luther King Jr., and long after his death.

Scott King served with civil rights groups throughout her time as a student at Antioch College and the New England Conservatory of Music. Shortly after she and King married in 1953, the couple returned to the South, where they lent their support to local and regional organizations such as the NAACP and the Montgomery Improvement Association.

They also supported the Women’s Political Council, an organization founded by female African American professors at Alabama State University that facilitated voter education and registration, and also protested discrimination on city buses. These local leadership efforts paved the way for widespread support of Rosa Parks’ resistance to segregation on public busing.

A man in a light-colored suit and a woman in short-sleeved dress look at a piece of paper together in a study.
Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King work in his office in Atlanta in July 1962. TPLP/Archive Photos via Getty Images

Following her husband’s assassination in 1968, Scott King devoted her life to institutionalizing his philosophy and practice of nonviolence. She established the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, led a march of sanitation workers in Memphis and joined efforts to organize the Poor People’s Campaign. A longtime advocate of workers rights, she also supported a 1969 hospital workers’ strike in South Carolina, delivering stirring speeches against the treatment of African American staff.

Scott King’s commitment to nonviolence went beyond civil rights at home. During the 1960s, she became involved in peace and anti-war efforts such as the Women’s Strike for Peace and opposed the escalating war in Vietnam. By the 1980s, she had joined protests against South African apartheid, and before her death in 2006, she spoke out in favor of LGBT rights – capping a lifetime of activism against injustice and inequalities.

Women and the March

While Scott King’s support and ideas were particularly influential, many other women played essential roles in the success of the civil rights movement.

Take the most iconic moment of the civil rights struggle, in many Americans’ minds: the Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freeedom, at which King delivered his landmark “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

As the 60th anniversary of the march approaches, it is critical to recognize the activism of women from all walks of life who helped to strategize and organize one of the country’s most massive political demonstrations of the 20th century. Yet historical accounts overwhelmingly highlight the march’s male leadership. With the exception of Daisy Bates, an activist who read a short tribute, no women were invited to deliver formal speeches.

A black and white photo shows several formally dressed women putting money in a church collection plate.
Members of Carmel Presbyterian Church donating money for the March on Washington. Carl Iwasaki/The Chronicle Collection via Getty Images

Women were among the key organizers of the march, however, and helped recruit thousands of participants. Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women, was often the lone woman at the table of leaders representing national organizations. Anna Arnold Hedgeman, who also served on the planning committee, was another strong advocate for labor issues, anti-poverty efforts and women’s rights.

A woman in an evening dress with a corsage stands next to a man in a suit, both smiling and chatting.
Dorothy Height stands with Martin Luther King Jr. in November 1957. Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images

Photographs of the march show women attended in large numbers, yet few historical accounts adequately credit women for their leadership and support. Civil rights activist, lawyer and Episcopalian priest Pauli Murray, among others, called for a gathering of women to address this and other instances of discrimination a few days later.

Hidden in plain view

African American women led and served in all the major campaigns, working as field secretaries, attorneys, plaintiffs, organizers and educators, to name just a few roles. So why did early historical accounts of the movement neglect their stories?

There were women propelling national civil rights organizations and among King’s closest advisers. Septima Clark, for example, was a seasoned educator whose strong organizing skills played a consequential role in voter registration, literacy training and citizenship education. Dorothy Cotton was a member of the inner circle of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King was president, and was involved in literacy training and teaching nonviolent resistance.

A man crouching on the pavement cradles an injured woman.
A civil rights marcher exposed to tear gas holds an unconscious Amelia Boynton Robinson after mounted police officers attacked marchers in Selma. Bettmann/Getty Images

Yet women’s organizing during the 1950s and 1960s is most evident at local and regional levels, particularly in some of the most perilous communities across the deep South. Since the 1930s, Amelia Boynton Robinson of Dallas County, Alabama, and her family had been fighting for voting rights, laying the groundwork for the struggle to end voter suppression that continues to the present. She was also key in planning the 50-mile Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. Images of the violence that marchers endured – particularly on the day that came to be known as Bloody Sunday – shocked the nation and eventually contributed to the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

A sitting woman with gray hair in a gold-colored dress and jewelry.
Civil rights activist Amelia Boynton Robinson attends an awards ceremony in New York in 2011. Marc Bryan-Brown/WireImage via Getty News

Or take Mississippi, where there would not have been a sustained movement without women’s activism. Some names have become well known, like Fannie Lou Hamer, but others deserve to be.

Two rural activists, Victoria Gray and Annie Devine, joined Hamer as representatives to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a parallel political party that challenged the state’s all-white representatives at the 1964 Democratic Convention. A year later, the three women represented the party in a challenge to block the state’s congressmen from taking their seats, given ongoing disenfranchisement of Black voters. Though the congressional challenge failed, the activism was a symbolic victory, serving note to the nation that Black Mississippians were no longer willing to accept centuries-old oppression.

Many African American women were out-front organizers for civil rights. But it is no less important to remember those who assumed less visible, but indispensable, roles behind the scenes, sustaining the movement over time.The Conversation

Vicki Crawford, Professor of Africana Studies, Morehouse College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

HistoryMakers x UrbanFaith Interview

HistoryMakers x UrbanFaith Interview

Ms. Julieanna Richardson went from broadcast and television executive to the founder of an organization dedicated to preserving Black History. She now runs one of the largest organizations dedicated to the location and preservation of African American historical archives, stories, and history: The History Makers. UrbanFaith contributor Maina Mwaura sat down with her to learn about the Historymakers and get her insight on our world and history today.

27 Summers: Ronald Olivier x UrbanFaith

27 Summers: Ronald Olivier x UrbanFaith

UrbanFaith Editor Allen Reynolds sat down with prison chaplain and author Ronald Olivier to talk about his story of going from a life of poverty and violence to facing a life sentence in prison to being saved and freed by the power of Jesus Christ in his amazing book 27 Summers. The full interview is above, below are excerpts edited for clarity and length.

Allen

I am excited today to have with me an author, a chaplain, a man of God who has an incredible story and an incredible journey to share. And that is Mr. Ronald Olivier sharing to tell about [his] book: 27 Summers. One of the things people don’t realize is how long the justice system can take. Can you talk a little bit about the trouble of getting used to living a life that is violent or that is trouble? And really, I’m trying to get to how the idea of living a sinful lifestyle can feel so normal that we don’t realize that sooner or later it’s gonna catch up [to us].

Ronnie

Yeah, I think one of the tricks is what the enemy uses is that belief that you will never get caught. Yeah, [they] got caught, but not you. You too slick, you too sharp. He just lets us see all that we can accumulate, all this stuff, the money, the fame that comes with it. But never let us see the end of it. And most of my friends never made it out of their teens. Murder was all around me and I really thought that was my fate. I felt that’s how I supposed to go. I thought this was a way of life. You do what you do, live as long as you can live and die. And I always thought I would die before I was 21. I never thought I’d make it out my teens.

You just become accustomed to it. It’s like I heard a story about boiling a frog. You never just put them in hot water. You put them in temperate water and let the temperature increase and he’ll stay there and boil. But if you just drop them in hot water they get out.

So that’s how sin is. You know, it progresses, and you can’t figure out how to get out. I really felt like that was my fate and I couldn’t get out. Now I can look back and see all the escape routes that God was trying to get me out on. But the enemy had been blinding my mind so much to make me think that there was no way out and that’s one of the greatest lies of the enemy. Man, you’re stuck there. You never get out. This is the way life is supposed to be. No, that’s a lie.

 

Allen

Yeah, and I think that’s so seductive. I want to take you to that moment which I think was God moment where you realized that you weren’t going to get the death penalty but instead, were going to get life in prison. Can you talk about just what it was like literally to be placed between death and life and to find out you got life?

Ronnie

Yes, so I’m on trial for first degree murder facing the death penalty. And up until that point, everything was fun and games to me. It wasn’t real. I thought I was getting out. I didn’t feel the weight of it until I placed in the holding tank about 12 AM, 1 AM in the morning while the jury was deliberating. I can still hear the iron door slam and the key turn. And I could still hear the guards footsteps fading off until I couldn’t hear him no more. And I’m there alone in a box. And man, the weight of that was going on came crushing down on me. I was like, whoa, there’s 12 people that don’t know anything about me that are making the decision on whether I live or die. I was like, wow. And at that moment I was like, man, I don’t wanna die. I believe God used my mother’s voice. I heard her saying this so clearly to me. It was so loud in my spirit to where she said, son, if you ever in trouble that I can’t get you out, you should call on Jesus. And at that moment, I got on my knees. I’m crying and I called out to Jesus, and I had a very simple prayer. I made a deal with God. A lot of people say you don’t make deals with God. I made a deal with Him. And I said, Lord, if you don’t let them kill me, I promise you, I’ll serve you the rest of my life. And for the first time in my life, I had experienced and felt the peace of God. There was a peace that came. I didn’t know what it was then, but I just had this inward resolve that I was gonna be okay. It was this calmness that came over me. And so the jury came back with a guilty verdict of the lesser offense. That carried a mandatory life sentence without benefits of parole or probation. In layman’s terms, you die in prison. You never get out. But I like to put it like this in that holding tank, I received two life sentences. You know, the state was giving me a life sentence with no benefits. But God was giving me a life sentence with so many benefits that he encouraged me in His word to not forget them. So there it is, man. I get this life sentence and I’m headed to penitentiary. Not just jail, but penitentiary, which is a big difference.

Allen

A lot of times we think that, you know, we give our lives to Christ and then they just get better all of a sudden. I love that your story is not a story of an instant change. Why is that important?

Ronnie

I think that’s very important because I know it helped me to be patient with other young believers because you could be you could be very judgmental if you’re not careful and say, oh, they’re not born again. They’re not. But, when you think about it, just like in the natural, when a baby comes out of the womb, the baby looks like what it came out of. And so that baby, you know, that baby don’t come out looking like the little [girl or boy they will be when they’re big.] The baby looks like a little prune with all type of afterbirth on.  They have to go through a process to be clean, to be fed, to be to be changed. And the baby is totally dependent on someone else. And so that’s what the discipleship comes in, you know, and even though I knew I was born again, I look like what I came out. I still was doing some of the same things. But I continued to go to church.  A lot of people [put] pressure on guys, you’re going to church, you’re still doing all that. As if you’re supposed to be perfect when you go to church. But and not realizing that the church is, it’s man, it’s a spiritual hospital. People go there because they’re sick. We’re all getting some type of treatment. If you break your arm, you don’t wait till it get well, then go to the hospital. That’s absurd, you know, I’m going to get some treatment because I’m broken because I have all these issues because, you know, I’m messed up and I’m wrapped up in sin. That’s why I’m going to church. And man, we need to have people with that understanding when guys get to church to help them to disciple, to love on them, to get them where they need to be. And that’s what guys did for me, man. They discipled me. They didn’t judge me. They kept pushing me in the right direction, kept praying for me, you know, and kept being there for me. And man, that’s so important and helping young believers because they look like they’re not nothing really changed. But something did happen in their hearts, and it takes a process. And that was going on the inside coming on outside where you can see it and enjoy.

Allen

What advice would you give to young adults now who may be feeling hopeless or may feel like there’s not any way out of their situations? Because I think your story really speaks to that.

Ronnie

One thing I would say is to have hope. Man, you got you embrace the hope of glory, which is Jesus Christ. There is absolutely no hope without him. And so I would encourage you to develop that relationship. I’m not talking about religion. I’m not talking about just going to church. I’m talking about having a real personal relationship. Spending time with him, you develop your ear to hear his voice, to distinguish his voice from any other voice and allow him to lead and direct you. I was in prison. God said, look, don’t go that way. Go over here. And something would happen over there. You know, I get drugged up or killed and all this other thing. And he was he was leading and protecting me in the midst of chaos. He would do the same thing for you. But he’s not a respecter of person, but he is a respecter of faith. He just looking for someone to believe Him at His word. And I promise you God can do exceedingly, abundantly, above all you ask or think, but it’s going to be according to the power that’s working in you. You got to let him work in you. And so I just encourage you with that.