Glenda Williams Goodson has written on the life of Church of God in Christ pioneers for many years. In Rediscovering An American Classic, she edits essays by Barbara McCoo Lewis, Willie Bragg, June Rivers, Romanetha Stallworth, and Cynthia Bragg who provide thoughtful insight on the faith in God as Dr. Arenia Conelia Mallory worked in education, social justice, and cultural change. One of the foremost educators in America. Mallory, a middle class Black from Jackson, Illinois entered the Southland at the request of Church Of God In Christ founder Bishop Charles Harrison Mason. Soon after her arrival at the Saints Industrial and Literary School in Lexington, Mississippi the principal died and the 22 year became the President of a school with little income, only two books for the entire school with outdoor facilities. With faith in God and determination, she changed the face of Holmes County through succeeded in educating the children of impoverished sharecroppers, despite obstacles such as threats of lynching by the KKK when she refused to fire white teachers. On the 300 acres she amassed for the school, Mallory would add a high school, an accredited college, partner with a sorority to provide health care to those who never visited a doctor and her students would give a command performance in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s White House.A strategic planner, Mallory was Innovative, seemingly fearless and motivated to make a difference in the world. She traveled to shanties to rescue children from poverty and ignorance, North with her all female gospel singing group to raise funds for the school and to Africa where she brought children from the COGIC schools there to educate at her school. She creates strategic alliances with American icon Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the Bethune-Cookman University and the President of the National Council of Negro Women and her sister-in-law actress Ethel Waters to raise awareness and funds for the school. Essayists relate how during the 1930s worldwide Depression she led the Jubilee Harmonizers from cotton fields in the South, to large churches in the North and all the way to the FDR White House. Rediscovering an American Classic essayists relate the far reaching inspiration of Mallory’s fearlessness (she was threatened with lynching in the KKK infested Holmes County when she hired three white teachers) to today’s female leaders. Many students would graduate from universities and worked as college professors, at least one became the General Consul to Liberia and others worked in the space program while heeding her admonition to Walk in Dignity, Talk with Dignity and Live in Dignity. Through these essays, the reader will rediscover how faith in God and confidence in His choice of you will help to complete their assignment!
