Read from the opening essay, "Twentieth-Century Gospel: As the People Moved They Sang a New Song" in If You Don't Go, Don't Hinder Me: The African American Sacred SongTradition by Bernice Johnson Reagon:

"I joined my first and only gospel choir when I joined the church at eleven years of age. It was the first gospel choir at Mt. Early Baptist, a small rural church in Dougherty County pastored by my father, Rev. Jessie Johnson. My sister Fannie, who played the piano, organized the choir. It was 1954—gospelwas everywhere. Most of the Baptist and Pentecostal churches inside the city of Albany, the county seat of Dougherty, already had gospel choirs. However, the country churches were sometimes a decade behind the city churches."

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Read from the introduction of Narrative Beginnings: Theories and Practices edited by Brian Richardson: "The beginning is a foundational element of any narrative, fictional or nonfictional, public or private, official or subversive. The full importance of beginnings, however, has long been neglected or misunderstood and is only recently becoming known. Currently, only a handful of studies address this surprisingly rich and elusive subject. Others, many of them represented in this volume, are now starting to give beginnings the historical, theoretical, and ideological analysis they require. This critical and theoretical neglect is particularly surprising given the power beginnings possess for the … Continue reading Off the Shelf: Narrative Beginnings edited by Brian Richardson

Read from the introduction of Green Plans: Blueprint for a Sustainable Earth by Huey D. Johnson:

"It has been twelve years since the first edition of this book. In it I described Green Planning as a concept of great importance and a promising step toward solving environmental problems. Since then, the environmental programs of most nations have not kept pace with the growth of those problems, which are now capped off by the arrival of the huge threat of global warming. Nonetheless, I’m pleased to say that in certain countries, principally the Netherlands, Singapore, and New Zealand, Green Planning has shown exemplary success as a way to work toward social, economic, and environmental sustainability.

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