WCatherine Ann Cora is an American professional chef best known for her featured role as an "Iron Chef" on the Food Network television show Iron Chef America and as co-host of Around the World in 80 Plates on Bravo.
WShelby Dade Foote Jr. was an American writer, historian and journalist. Although he viewed himself primarily as a novelist, he is now best known for his The Civil War: A Narrative, a three-volume history of the American Civil War.
WKiese Laymon is an American writer, editor and a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of three full-length books: a novel, Long Division (2013), and two memoirs, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (2013) and Heavy (2018). Laymon's work deals with American racism, feminism, family, masculinity, geography, Hip-hop and Southern black life. His blog, Cold Drank, features essays and short fiction as well as pieces written by guest contributors. Laymon has written essays and stories for publications including Gawker, ESPN.com, The Washington Post, the New York Times, NPR, BuzzFeed, and The Guardian.
WNekima Valdez Levy Armstrong is an American lawyer and social justice activist. She served as president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP from 2015 to 2016. She has led a variety of organizations that focus on issues of racial equality and disparity in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area. Levy Armstrong was an associate professor of law at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis from 2003 to 2016. After concluding her term as an NAACP chapter president and leaving her academic post, she had an unsuccessful campaign for mayor of Minneapolis in the 2017 election. She has been a prominent local activist in several protests over the killing of unarmed black Americans by police officers.
WThalia Mara Mahoney was an American ballet dancer and educator who authored 11 books on the subject.
WJames Howard Meredith is an American civil rights movement figure, writer, political adviser, and Air Force veteran. In 1962, he became the first African-American student admitted to the theretofore segregated University of Mississippi, after the intervention of the federal government, an event that was a flashpoint in the civil rights movement. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, Meredith decided to exercise his constitutional rights and apply to the University of Mississippi. His goal was to put pressure on the Kennedy administration to enforce civil rights for African Americans.
WMary U. Miller is an American fiction writer. She is the author of two collections of short stories entitled Big World and Always Happy Hour. Her debut novel entitled The Last Days of California was published by Liveright. It is the story of a fourteen-year-old girl on a family road trip from the South to California, led by her evangelical father. By January 2014, Big World had sold 3,000 copies and Last Days of California had an initial print run of 25,000.
WRobert McNair Price is an American New Testament scholar who argues against the existence of a historical Jesus. He taught theology and religious studies at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary. Price is a professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, and the author of a number of books on biblical studies and the historicity of Jesus.
WStuart Stevens is an American travel writer and political consultant. He was the cofounder of Washington, D.C. - based political media consultancy Stevens & Schriefer Group. In 2013, he became a founding partner in Strategic Partners & Media. He served as a top strategist for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign in addition to several other significant presidential campaigns over the course of his career. He has joined The Lincoln Project, a Conservative Never Trump group for the 2020 United States presidential election.
WKathryn Stockett is an American novelist. She is known for her 2009 debut novel, The Help, which is about African-American maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 1960s.
WTate Taylor is an American filmmaker and actor. A frequent collaborator with his friends and prolific character actresses Allison Janney and Octavia Spencer, Taylor is best known for directing The Help (2011), Get on Up (2014), and The Girl on the Train (2016).
WAlice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she wrote the novel The Color Purple, for which she won the National Book Award for hardcover fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She also wrote the novels Meridian (1976) and The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970). An avowed feminist, Walker coined the term womanist to mean "A black feminist or feminist of color" in 1983.
WRebecca Walker is an American writer, feminist, and activist. Walker has been regarded as one of the prominent voices of Third Wave Feminism, and the coiner of the term "third wave", since publishing a 1992 article on feminism in Ms. magazine called "Becoming the Third Wave", in which she proclaimed: "I am the Third Wave."
WEudora Alice Welty was an American short story writer, novelist and photographer, who wrote about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Order of the South. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi, has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public as a house museum.
WJohn Alfred Williams was an African-American author, journalist, and academic. His novel The Man Who Cried I Am was a bestseller in 1967.
WRichard Nathaniel Wright was an American author of novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially related to the plight of African Americans during the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, who suffered discrimination and violence in the South and the North. Literary critics believe his work helped change race relations in the United States in the mid-20th century.