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Reclaiming the Great World House

Virtual Book Talk “Reclaiming the Great World House: The Global Vision of Martin Luther King Jr.”

Sunday, Jan. 30, 6 p.m.

Join the volume editors, Dr. Vicki Crawford, director, Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection and professor of Africana studies, and Dr. Lewis V. Baldwin, professor emeritus of religious studies, Vanderbilt University, as they discuss themes from their book with chapter authors: Dr. Crystal de Gregory, research, MTSU Center for Historic Preservation; Dr. Hak Joon Lee, Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics, Fuller Theological Seminary, Dr. Larry Rivers, professor of history, State University of West Georgia.

Watch at 6 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 30 on the Morehouse College YouTube channel.

“Reclaiming the Great World House: the Global Vision of Martin Luther King Jr.” presents a global context for understanding the intellectual and sociopolitical legacy of MLK in the 21st century.

The burgeoning terrain of Martin Luther King Jr. studies is leading to a new appreciation of his thought and its meaningfulness for the emergence and shaping of the twenty-first-century world. This volume brings together an impressive array of scholars from various backgrounds and disciplines to explore the global significance of King-then, now, and in the future.

Employing King’s metaphor of “the great world house, the major focus is on King’s appraisal of the global human struggle in the 1950s and 1960s, his relevance for today’s world, and how future generations might constructively apply or appropriate his key ideas and values in addressing racism, poverty and economic injustice, militarism, sexism, homophobia, the environmental crisis, globalization, and other challenges confronting humanity today. The contributors treat King in context and beyond context, taking seriously the historical King, while also exploring how his name, activities, contributions, and legacy are still associated with a globalized rights culture.

Dr. Vicki Crawford
Endowed Chair and Director of the Morehouse Martin Luther King Jr. Collection and Professor of Africana Studies

Dr. Vicki Crawford is Director of the Office of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection and Professor of Africana Studies. In this position, she develops campus-based programming and community outreach initiatives that advance the teachings and nonviolent philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In addition, she serves on the curatorial committee at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights which has oversight for rotating thematic exhibits of the King papers.

Dr. Crawford is a civil rights scholar whose groundbreaking volume of essays, Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, (1993) was one of the first publications to address the under-researched role of women in the African American freedom struggle. She has published numerous essays and book chapters on the Civil Rights Movement while teaching courses in African American history over the past three decades. Her publications also include a recently co-edited book with Dr. Lewis Baldwin titled, Reclaiming the Great World House: The Global Vision of Martin Luther King, Jr., published by the University of Georgia Press as a part of the Morehouse College King Collection Series on Civil and Human Rights. Dr. Crawford also serves as the General Series Editor. She holds a Ph.D. degree in American Studies from Emory University and has completed post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Dr. Lewis V. Baldwin
Vanderbilt University Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies

An ordained Baptist minister who has preached throughout the United States, Dr. Lewis V. Baldwin has established himself as a professor and scholar. He has taught at Wooster College in Ohio, Colgate University in New York, Colgate-Rochester Divinity School in New York, Fisk University, and American Baptist College in Nashville, and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of some sixty articles and several books. His “Invisible” Strands in African Methodism won the American Theological Library Association Award, and his There is a Balm in Gilead won the Midwest Book Achievement Award of the Midwest Independent Publishers Association.

Learn more about Dr. Lewis V. Baldwin

Dr. Crystal de Gregory
Vanderbilt University Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies

A historian and storyteller whose research interests include black higher education and college student activism, Dr. Crystal de Gregory is a research fellow at Middle Tennessee State University’s Center for Historic Preservation in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She is also the founder and director of Dorian and Beyond, a digital storytelling project of Hurricane Dorian in The Bahamas.

Learn more about Crystal de Gregory

Dr. Hak Joon Lee
Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics Fuller Theological Seminary

Hak Joon Lee was named Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics in September 2015, having served on the Fuller faculty since 2011 as professor of theology and ethics. He is an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Dr. Lee’s research focuses on covenant, public theology, global ethics, and Asian American theology and ethics. He has also centered much of his attention on

the ethics and spirituality of Martin Luther King Jr. With more than seventeen years of experience in pastoral ministry, Lee’s passion has been the renewal of the church in the globalizing, digitized world through the deeper integration of ecclesia and academia.

Learn more about Dr. Hak Joon Lee

Dr. Larry O. Rivers
Vanderbilt University Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies

Dr. Larry O. Rivers is associate professor of history at the University of West Georgia. His published work discusses topics including civil rights, politics, race and inequality, and desegregation.

Learn more about Dr. Larry O. Rivers