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MAMI WATA RISING CONFERENCE

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Mami Wata is both a complex and accessible symbol, ideology, cosmology that is open to so many possibilities in the imaginations, meanings, and significations related to Susie King Taylor. The phenomenal speakers' topics will explore a range of personal, historical, and modern depictions of Mami Wata in various faith and spirituality traditions, metaphysical and embryonic development, resistance and liberation in world literature, mythology, biblical allegories, artistic expressions and religious iconography in the African diaspora.

Free and Open to the Public

OPENING RECEPTION BEGINS FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 2018 @ 7:00 PM

Hors D'ouevres and Lowcountry Boil Sampler 

PRESENTERS

Keynote Speaker

DR. CLARISSA MYRICK-HARRIS, Ph.D.  (KEYNOTE SPEAKER)

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Paper: Conjuring Auset, Calling Mami Wata: Susie King Taylor and the Tradition of Healer Leadership Among African World Women 

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Scholar-activist, author and higher education administrator, Dr. Clarissa Myrick-Harris is a dynamic servant leader and Founder/President of OWA Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the social, economic, and spiritual empowerment of underserved people. At Morehouse College (2012-2016), Dr. Myrick-Harris was the first woman academic dean at the nation’s only historically black all-male higher education institution. She then served as an associate provost at Morehouse. More recently, she served as provost at Savannah State University. The educator served as Interim Executive Director of the UNCF (United Negro College Fund) Institute for Capacity Building (ICB) and the founding Director of the UNCF Curriculum and Faculty Enhancement Program (2007-2012). Her scholarly research and writing focus on the tradition of leadership and institution building among African Americans, especially black women. Her publications include: “Call the Women: The Tradition of African American Female Activism in Georgia During the Civil Rights Movement,” a  chapter in Southern Black Women in the Modern Civil Rights Movement, edited by Bruce Glasrud and Merline Pitre (2013); “Behind the Scenes: Two Women of the Free Southern Theater,” in Women of the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torch Bearers, 1941-1965 edited by Vicki Crawford, Jacqueline Rouse, et.al (1993);  a Smithsonian Magazine article about anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett (2002);  the  monograph Perspectives on Exemplary Transformational Leadership Among Presidents at Historically Black Colleges and Universities published by UNCF (2014); and the book All Day and All Night: The History of the Atlanta Medical Association: 1890-2012 , co-authored with her late husband Dr. Norman Harris (2014). The educator earned her Ph.D. in African American Studies from Emory University, her Master’s degree in News-Editorial Journalism from The Ohio State University and her B.A. degree in English from Morris Brown College.  An Atlanta native, Dr. Myrick-Harris is the mother of two adult daughters, writer Amina Aneesah Harris and visual artist Ayana Savannah Harris.

ROSE STEVENS MULLICE, GENEALOGIST, RESEARCHER & AUTHOR

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Presentation: The Tales From the Crypt: Mapping a Cemetery

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Rose Stevens Mullice is a retired licensed clinical social worker. She is a well sought-after community genealogist and the go-to person for researching African American family history in Liberty County. Like Susie Baker King Taylor, she is a ‘binyah’ – a native of Liberty County who was reared in Sunbury and Midway. Her reputation precedes her from Midway to Frankfurt, Germany. She is knowledgeable of generations of African American family history and surnames in the county. An enthusiastic and thorough researcher, she is the author of the Anderson Family History and Genealogy in Liberty County, Georgia.

PATT GUNN, MASTER STORYTELLER

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Edutainment: Gullah Geechee Welcome tuh da Wata

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Patt Gunn is  Gullah Geechee through and through!  She is known as the ’Memory Keeper’ of the African American journey from slavery to freedom in America. This Master Storyteller is the founder and Artistic Director of The Saltwata Players, a  Gullah Geechee folk art performance team of ring shouters, singers, praise n’ worshipers and master storytellers. She mesmerizes audiences with her soul-stirring a capella songs interwoven with stories, tambourines, scrub boards and other percussion instruments. She writes, and produces ‘sheroes n’ heroes’ historical re-enactments, tours, dinner theaters and musical productions about slavery, emancipation and Black Reconstruction. She is the curator of a national traveling photographic exhibit titled ‘The American Abolitionists:  Conscience of the Nation. It consists of 100 framed portraits of Abolitionists and U.S. Union Army soldiers from ‘Sherman’s March to the Sea’. In April 2015, she traveled to Washington D.C. with The Saltwata Players  to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the end of  slavery—performing  in the Rose Garden of The White House, The Lincoln Cottage and  The Lincoln Memorial. Her most recent project is an annual  ‘Jubilee Freedom Day’,  celebration in downtown Savannah celebrating the end of slavery on December 21, 1864. This Master Storyteller is also co-owner of UNDERGROUND TOURS, LLC, a cultural arts and heritage tour agency in Savannah, Georgia. Celebrating Gullah Geechee Folkways, Foodways and   Spirituality on the Georgia Coast !  

STACY ASHMORE COLE, RESEARCHER, GENEALOGIST, WEB AUTHOR

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Presentation: They Had Names (Slave Database)

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Stacy Ashmore Cole retired from the federal civil service in 2014. She began researching her family history, a hobby that quickly became an obsession. In the process, she discovered her Liberty County slaveowner ancestors. The documents that told their stories also led her to the stories of their slaves, and she then began to realize the challenges that keep the descendants of slaves from learning these stories. So she built a website – They Had Names – to document the names of Liberty County enslaved people that occur in antebellum probate documents. Mrs. Cole is also secretary of the Midway Museum Board of Governors, and a member of the Coastal Georgia Genealogical Society.

JO COLEMAN, LCSW, AFRICAN SCHOOL EDUCATION ADVOCATE

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Presentation: Going to Africa and Coming Back to America

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Jo Coleman is a licensed clinical social worker and owner of Coastal Family Counseling, LLC. A native of Savannah, Georgia, in 1975 she was an American Foreign Service exchange student in Accra, Ghana for three months. She developed a strong and lasting relationship with her host family - the Boatengs - in Chiraa, Brong Ahafo/Akan region. She has traveled back to Ghana on several occasions and frequently sends supplies to support the Divine School started by Agnes Boateng in Sunyani. The mother of four children, she is also the founder of BuddyWatch, which raises funds for tiny home communities for homeless U.S. war veterans.

HERMINA GLASS-HILL, PUBLIC HISTORIAN, AUTHOR, CULTURAL INTERPRETATION STRATEGIST

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Presentation: Susie King Taylor Escape to Freedom Tour and Exhibit

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Hermina Glass-Hill is a ‘cumyah’ to Liberty County. She was born and raised in Atlanta where she developed a love for history. She is the founder and executive director of the Susie King Taylor Women’s Institute and Ecology Center. She attended Spelman College and Georgia State University where she earned a Master of Heritage Preservation and Public History. Former associate director of the Civil War Center at Kennesaw State University, she is an accomplished author, writer, public speaker, and historical consultant.  Her current work-in-progress is Justice Sweet Land of Liberty! The Service and Activism of Ex-Slave Susie King Taylor.

Susie King Taylor 

August 3 - 4, 2018   |   Midway, Georgia

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

MAMI WATA RISING

For more information about the Susie King Taylor Mami Wata Rising Conference, call 1-912-884-3605 or email register@susiekingtaylorinstitute.org

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