

This image is of Peggy (R), then a 19 year-old SNCC member, next to future civil rights icon, Dr. Dorothy Cotton (L), after a 1962 church burning in Georgia—the state that Peggy's great-great grandparents, William & Ellen Craft, famously escaped from enslavement nearly 115 years earlier...
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1.15.23
Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely
Dr. Dorothy Cotton
CBS SUNDAY MORNING & MLK DAY
Apologies again for the extended time between posts, but on this actual January 15 birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I am honored by both my having been active in SNCC and bening the great-great-granddaughter of famed formerly enslaved abolitionists, William & Ellen Craft, that on this special day I was part of the wonderful segment about them on CBS Sunday Morning that featured acclaimed author, Ilyon Woo, who's book on them, entitled Master, Slave, Husband, Wife (Simon & Schuster), will be released this Tuesday, January 17. I hope you're able to obtain a copy of the book, to be inspired by their story and Ilyon's powerful writing.
I want to thank the CBS Sunday Morning team/producer, Alan Golds, Ilyon, the exceptional Mark Whitaker (also an author in his own right), as well as film legend Charles Burnett for introducing me to Ilyon.
Finally, below is the poem I recited in the CBS Sunday Morning interview, that I first presented at SCAD's extraordinary 2016 tribute to my great-great-grandparents...
Today we stand...
Our family in a perpetual circle of grace.
Listing to our ancestors calling to us
Through blood and sacrifice and communal space
To RISE...CONTINUE...CELEBRATE...AND PERSIST
On this continuum of collective effort and
individual sacrifice...
Following their stepping stones to
Liberation!
© 2016 Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely. All rights reserved.
A CALLING FORTH FROM WILLIAM & ELLEN CRAFT
by Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely