About the Author

Merideth Taylor is Professor Emerita of Theater and Dance at St. Mary's College of Maryland. Taylor received an Individual Artist Award in playwriting from the Maryland State Arts Council in 2003 and 2007 and received a 2007 Maryland African American Heritage Preservation Award and a 2007 St. Mary's County Historic Preservation Service Award for the book, In Relentless Pursuit of an Education: African American stories from a Century of Segregation, which she co-edited. In 2010, Taylor received a Historic Preservation Service Award from the St. Mary's County Historic Preservation Committee and County Commissioners for the video documentary, With All Deliberate Speed: One High School's Story, which she co-produced, wrote, and directed, and, in 2011, a Communicators International Award for her short film, Historic Sotterley: A Tidewater Legacy. The films were selected for inclusion and awards in the 2016 and 2017 Southern Maryland Film Festivals. Taylor was honored in 2016 by the St. Mary's County Branch NAACP with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her use of the performing arts to produce positive social change.

About the Contributor

Jeffrey Hammond is the George B. and Willma Reeves Distinguished Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of English at St. Mary's College of Maryland. He has published three scholarly books, and his literary nonfiction has won two Pushcart Prizes, been awarded Shenandoah's Carter Prize for Essay and The Missouri Review Editors' Prize for Essay, and has appeared in such journals as American Scholar, Gettysburg Review, Southern Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review.