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Ruby Nell Sales
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DEFIANCE, Ohio –Civil rights activist, social critic, public theologian, and history maker Ruby Nell Sales is a keynote speaker for Defiance College’s 2009 McMaster Symposium. Sales is the founder and executive director for the Spirit House Project, a national social justice organization that focuses on non-violent movements to bring people together. She will speak Saturday, April 4, at 9 a.m. in Schomburg Auditorium on the campus of Defiance College.
Sales grew up during the Civil Rights Movement and became a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). As a student member of the movement, she worked In Lowndes, Macon and Dallas counties in Alabama. In the face of terrorism and violence that southern whites unleashed, Sales and her SNCC colleagues joined forces with local people to resist the violence while struggling for voters’ rights.
One afternoon, as she and friend Jonathan Daniels, a white seminarian, stood in line at a corner store, a man shot and killed Daniels when he moved to protect Sales. Unnerved and unable to speak significantly for seven months, Sales determined to attend the trial of Daniels' murderer, and to testify on behalf of her slain colleague. Her perseverance moved her to a career of social activism.
Sales completed her undergraduate education at Manhattanville College where she received a B.A .degree in America History with highest honor. She attended Princeton University as a Princeton Scholar where she advanced to Ph.D. candidacy. In 1998, Ruby received a Master of Divinity degree from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., where she was an Absalom Jones Scholar.
Sales taught full-time at Spelman College and Bucknell University. Longing to continue her work in social justice, she created two kitchen table projects, Black Women’s Voices and Images and Women of All Colors. Both of these organizations provided common spaces for women to come together to preserve and promote their voices and lives.
Sales's activities and achievements are numerous. She is a prolific writer whose sermons and social critiques are widely acclaimed and circulated. She was a contributing editor to The Other Side Magazine, a founding member of Sage Magazine: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women and has appeared as a commentator on several television programs and on Pacifica Radio in Washington, D.C., and throughout the nation. Sales received a Certificate of Gratitude for her work on Eyes on the Prize, a documentary series about the Civil Rights Movement, is part of the Veterans of Hope documentary series, and was featured in Broken Ground: A Film on Race Relations in the South, by Broken Ground Productions. In 2000, Dan Rather spotlighted Sales on his American Dream segment,and the History Makers organization selected her as a History Maker in 2004.
In 2007, Sales produced and directed SisterAll Two: Our Name is Our Own in Los Angeles, to sell-out audiences of all generations and colors. As a producer, she opens up new audiences for young artists and supports their work through philanthropic contributions.
The Defiance College’s McMaster School for Advancing Humanity is the sponsor of the McMaster Symposium. The theme for the 2009 symposium is “Humanity at the Crossroads: Challenges to Sustainable Community Development,” and runs April 2 – 4 on the campus of Defiance College.
Defiance College, chartered in 1850, is an independent, liberal arts institution in Northwest Ohio offering more than 40 undergraduate majors as well as graduate programs in education and business. Defiance College has received national recognition for its educational experience of engagement. U. S. News and World Report ranks Defiance in the top tier of comprehensive colleges in the Midwest. The college website is www.defiance.edu.
March 23, 2009
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