Chapter 1: The Race is Not Given: My Scholarly Personal Narrative on the Journey to Endowed Chair

As a product of the rural South and the African American Baptist church, my formative years were filled with lessons in living that were imparted to me by various community and family sages, as well as the ecclesiastical leaders who commanded the pulpits of the churches in my little East Texas region of the world. I recognize that mine was a life of privilege in that I had at my disposal the cultural and social capital that all too often goes lacking among the student populations that I research and write about as part of my scholarly agenda as faculty member in the academe.