▼ CLICK BELOW TO EXPLORE ▼
A DECADE+ OF STORYTELLING POWERED BY THE BEST WRITERS ON THE PLANET

BE PART OF THE LEGACY

TAMPA BAY • FEBRUARY 23-24 2026

This FINAL encore experience will be unlike any other. Because like everything we do, it's been "reimagined" from beginning to end. It's not a virtual or hybrid event. It's not a conference. It's not a seminar, a workshop, a meeting, or a symposium. And it's not your typical run-of-the-mill everyday event crammed with stages, keynote speeches, team-building exercises, PowerPoint presentations, and all the other conventional humdrum. Because it's up close & personal by design. Where conversation trumps presentation. And where authentic connection runs deep.

Reflections on Racial Justice: Part IX – After John Lewis

After John Lewis’s death, the instructor in Highland Park United Methodist Church’s Affirmation class gave a homework assignment for a lesson on Martin Luther King:  identify human rights leaders born after 1970.

SEE PRIOR PARTS IN THIS SERIES BELOW↓

Reflections on Racial Justice: Part VIII – Intersectionality

Classmates’ answers included the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, Ibram X. Kindi, who wrote How to be an Anti-Racist and Stamped from the Beginning:  A History of Racist Ideas in America, Emmanuel Acho, author of Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, and filmmaker Ava DuVernay.

I thought of four local Dallas leaders who are often asked to join task forces and commissions to promote social justice.

  • Richie Butler, the African American pastor of St. Luke Community Methodist church, founded Project Unity to help heal race relations between law enforcement and citizens and which recently expanded to “provide an answer to the many calls for personal and societal change following events of racial injustice in America.”
  • Cece Cox, CEO of Dallas’s Resource Center, the primary LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS service organization in North Texas, recognized for her thirty-year leadership and advocacy in the LGBTQ civil rights movement.
  • Jennifer Sampson, President, and CEO of the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas which focuses on education, income, and health in the community.
  • Miguel Solis, Dallas Independent School District trustee and co-founder and president of the Latino Center for Leadership Development which prepares young Latinos for public service and corporate positions.

While these people are skilled leaders and advocates, I couldn’t think of young leaders of national prominence who are willing to risk their lives for their causes as John Lewis and Martin Luther King did.  Why not?  Individual Black, homosexual, and trans people are themselves at risk of violence, even death, from oppressors, both law enforcement and private citizens.  Here are some hypotheses.

  • This kind of violence has become normalized. There have been no Emmett Till moments, at least until George Floyd’s death.
  • Social justice issues have become disaggregated and dispersed. The Martin Luther King and John Lewis generation could mobilize a nation around de-segregation and voting rights.
  • Many activists through social media can organize impromptu demonstrations such as protests and counter-protests that took place recently in Weatherford, Texas over removing a confederate statue from the courthouse grounds.
  • Authority figures are no longer highly visible in their opposition to social justice issues. There are no more governors like George Wallace and Orval Faubus to galvanize advocates.  Overt enemies of social justice may have gone underground on the internet.

Another explanation is that nationally we are missing a higher calling to social justice.  Martin Luther King’s philosophy and discipline of social justice inspired John Lewis who wrote shortly before his death that King said: “each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out.”  Both King and Lewis believed that their stands for social justice and the resulting suffering was redemptive.  Are there national leaders who articulate this higher purpose?  Nominations?

Resource:  John Lewis, “Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation”

Frank Lloyd
Frank Lloyd
Dr. Frank Lloyd is a board member and Diversity Equity and Inclusion Chair for Literacy Achieves, a Dallas, Texas-based non-profit that teaches English as a second language to adult immigrants to facilitate their employment, parenting, and other life skills. He is the producer of Literacy Achieves’ podcast, When I Got Here: Untold Immigrant Stories where immigrants share inspiring personal stories of why they left their homelands, how they got to the U.S., and the lives they are making here. Dr. Lloyd is the former Associate Dean of Executive Education at Southern Methodist University's (SMU) Edwin L. Cox School of Business, where he led the development and delivery of award-winning executive leadership programs and established a national center of excellence on Latino leadership. Dr. Lloyd joined SMU’s Cox School from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona, where he was Vice President of Executive Education. Prior to joining Thunderbird, Dr. Lloyd was a human resources executive with General Motors. Among the highlights of his career, he was responsible for organization development and leadership training for GM Europe during its transition from mass to lean production, and he was the first GM Human Resources manager at New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI), the historic joint venture between GM and Toyota noted for its innovative labor-management relations and the introduction of the Toyota production system. Dr. Lloyd is an emeritus member of the Board of Directors of UNICON, the Global Consortium for University-based Executive Education. He is the former board chair of Daystar US which mobilizes resources to support Daystar, a non-denominational Christian university in Nairobi, Kenya whose mission is to prepare servant leaders for Africa. He also served on the national board of Inroads, an organization with the mission to develop and place talented underserved youth in business and industry and prepare them for corporate and community leadership. Dr. Lloyd was a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Isfahan in Iran. He also served as a U.S. Information Agency curriculum consultant for Germany. He earned a master’s degree at Purdue University and a Ph. D. at the University of Iowa. His undergraduate degree is from Occidental College.

DO YOU HAVE THE "WRITE" STUFF? If you’re ready to share your wisdom of experience, we’re ready to share it with our massive global audience – by giving you the opportunity to become a published Contributor on our award-winning Site with (your own byline). And who knows? – it may be your first step in discovering your “hidden Hemmingway”. LEARN MORE HERE


RECIPIENT OF THE 2024 "MOST COMPREHENSIVE LIFE & CULTURE MULTIMEDIA DIGEST" AWARD

WE ARE NOW FEATURED ON

EXPLORE 360° NATION

ENJOY OUR FREE EVENTS

OUR COMMUNITIES