39th Annual Nashville Conference on African American History and Culture "A Journey from Enslavement to Freedom"

Katie Delmez has been a curator at the Frist Art Museum since 2001. She has organizedseveral exhibitions including "We Shall Overcome: Civil Rights and the Nashville Press, 1957-1968;" "Nick Cave: Feat.;" "Slavery, The Prison Industrial System: Photographs by Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick;" and "Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: Journeys." She was also the curator of a major retrospective on photographer Carrie Mae Weems that traveled to four venues, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Ms. Delmez has overseen the presentation of more than 35 touring exhibitions at the Frist including "30 Americans;" "Aaron Douglas: African-American Modernist;" and "Reflections in Black: African-American Photography." She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and Boston University.

Brigette is the Director of African American Studies at the Belle Meade Plantation Museum n Nashville, TN. As a native Memphian, Brigette grew up fascinated with the hostile history of race relations in the South. This fascination led her to pursue and obtain a degree in History from Tennessee State University in 2014. Brigette's focuses include but are not limited to American chattel enslavement, 20th century new Negro, Civil Rights, and the role of hip-hop culture in modern America. Since her promotion, Brigette strives to push for accurate and ethical interpretation of African American history.

Tina Jones was born on an Army base while her father was serving in the U.S. Army during Vietnam. Raised in Connecticut, she attended Vassar College and received a degree in Third World Studies under the guidance of her mentor ad professor Norman Hodges--a Fisk graduate and former Fisk trustee--so perhaps it was inevitable that her later career in health care law would bring her to Nashville. Twenty years ago, she and her husband moved to Franklin where she became interested in the untold stories of the African American community there. She serves on the Board of the African American Heritage Society of Williamson County and directs the "Slaves to Soldiers" program there.

Brandon A. Owens, Sr. is Assistant Librarian for Technical ervices and Adjunct Lecturer in the Scholl of Humanities and Behavioral Social Sciences at Fisk University. Mr. Owens is also a graduate research assistant for the Center for Historic Preservation and a PhD candidate in Public History at Middle Tennessee State University. His dissertation will focus on Fisk University Library's role as a premiere African American public history institution.

Sharon Presley is a retired Air Force officer and former Professor of Aerospace Studies at Tennessee State University. She currently serves as a Leadership Trainer and motivational speaker.

Angela Sutton is a postdoctoral fellow in the Arts & Sciences at Vanderbilt University, where she works with the Mellon Partners for Humanities Education Program. A historian by training, she is interested in the ways in which history is used to both bolster and challenge existing power structures. She is on the board of Friends of Fort Negley, and completed the nomination paperwork that allowed this important historic site a designation on the UNESCO Slave Route, a global initiative which marks sites around the world which are crucial for the understanding of enslavement and its legacies. She is also director of the Fort Negley Descendants Project, an oral history archive which collects the voices and stories of black Nashvillians who descended from the builders and defenders of Fort Negley.

Linda T. Wynn is the Assistant Director for State Programs with the Tennessee Historical Commission and a member of Fisk University’s faculty, where she is teaches subjects in history and public administration in the Department of History and Political Science. She earned her B.S. and M. S. degrees in history, and a Masters in Public Administration from Tennessee State University. A co-founder of the Nashville Conference on African American History and Culture, she is an active scholar and contributor to numerous publications including Profiles of African Americans in Tennessee, of which she served as co-editor with Dr. Bobby Lovett; Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience, co-edited with Dr. Jessie C. Smith editor of Journey to Our Past: A Guide to African-American Markers in Tennessee. She contributed a chapter on “African Americans in Tennessee” for the African American State by State Encyclopedia edited by the late historian Alton Hornsby and published by Greenwood Press. Her pioneering chapter on The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the meaning of his ethos for women across the globe entitled “Beyond Patriarchy: The Meaning of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the Women of the World” appears in Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality edited by noted King scholar Lewis V. Baldwin and Paul Dekar. She has served as a consultant to the Frist Museum, the State Museum, and the Nashville Public Library, and other organizations. She contributed a chapter to the Frist’s award-wining We Shall Overcome catalog, entitled, “Nashville: An Inspirational City." She is a member of the Nashville City Cemetery Board, the Nashville Public Television (NPT) Advisory Board, and was reappointed to the Metropolitan Historical Commission of Nashville and Davidson County by former Mayor David Briley. A member of Spruce Street Baptist Church, she is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.