Authors Vanessa Julye and Donna McDaniel discuss the genesis of the book project, it’s relation to their ministries, and their hopes for its impact among Friends.
Interview with Vanessa Julye
Vanessa JulyeThe project originally was a revision of Kenneth Ives’ Black Quakers. Donna McDaniel had been approached by a subcommittee of the Religious Education Committee on redoing the book for FGC and had gotten a grant to go to Pendle Hill to work on the book. What became clear from that subcommittee is that they wanted to have a co-author that was a person of African descent. Information had circulated through different FGC committees, including the Committee for Ministry on Racism (CMR), which at that time I was serving on as a member. I was clear in telling them that my life was very full, with my full-time job working with the Green Circle Program, my committee work, and my ministry which at that time was part-time. I told them that I didn’t have time to work on the book.
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Interview with Donna McDaniel
Donna McDanielI knew Beckey Phipps, clerk of the Religious Education Committee of Friends General Conference, because we were both representatives of New England Yearly Meeting to FGC’s Central Committee for several years, so when I was looking for a worthwhile project on racism around Boston that I could donate a substantial amount of time to, Beckey was one of the people I e-mailed. Twenty minutes later she e-mailed back, saying that the RE Committee had been looking for an author for a project for about two years. The project was to update Kenneth Ives’ Black Quakers. As a writer and student of history, it just seemed to me that this would be exactly the kind of thing I’d love to do. This was in March 2001.
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