The following are members of the 2022-2024 Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts advisory board.
Robert “Bob” Clayton
Robert B. Clayton, was a model Johns Hopkins University student by any measure. A member of the Black Student Union, Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, and four-year member of the varsity basketball team (including two years as captain), he was as passionate about his extracurricular activities as he was about his academic pursuits.
Upon his graduation in 1984, he went on to earn a law degree from the University of Michigan in 1987, and start a successful family law and civil litigation career in Los Angeles. Through his law practice, he has handled an extensive portfolio of cases, including representing a number of well-known celebrities and professional athletes.
While building their professional careers, the Claytons have remained active at Hopkins, serving on the Alumni Council and the Society of Black Alumni, and participating in the mentoring, recruitment, and enhancement of the black student experience on campus.
“Brother Charlie” Charles Dugger
Charles Dugger, a retired Baltimore City school educator who taught in BCPSS for 45 years, used Afrocentric teachings throughout his career touching the hearts and minds of students. Additionally, he founded the Afrikan Liberation Day, Marcus Garvey Day and Kwanzaa celebrations in Baltimore. He worked as a WEAA dj, and started Camp Harambee-The People. He’s been educating youth from an African-centered perspective and organizing cultural events such as the annual Marcus Garvey Day Parade.
Rev. Dr. Alvin C. Hathaway
The Reverend Alvin C. Hathaway, Sr. was called to Union Baptist Church as Assistant Pastor in 2004, and elevated to the position of Pastor of this historic “Servant Church” in 2007.
A native Baltimorean and son of Union Baptist Church, he is truly a man of God. Acknowledging his call to the ministry and through obedience to Christ, he prepared himself academically and spiritually for the shepherding of God’s people. Rev. Hathaway has earned a Ph. D. in Philosophy of Religion from the North Carolina College of Theology and a Doctor of Ministry degree from the United Theological Seminary.
“I was involved with Reverend Dobson in every stage of his political career of activism from political involvement and civil rights involvement to organizing BUILD, Baltimore United in Leadership Development. I was involved in all of it. And so, I understood the responsibility of the church and then I understood the sense of history,” he says.
“But I also had a sense of the continuum of United Baptist Church,” he added. “Many people don’t realize my doctoral degree was literally in studying Union Baptist Church.”
Rev. Dr. Hathaway earned a Doctor of Ministry degree from the United Theological Seminary with a dissertation titled “Servant Church: Preaching and Teaching Servant Theology to African American leaders in Union Baptist of Baltimore.”
Martha S. Jones
Professor Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History, and a Professor at the SNF Agora Institute at The Johns Hopkins University. She is a legal and cultural historian whose work examines how Black Americans have shaped the story of American democracy.
Her work includes four books. Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (2020), was winner of the 2021 L.A. Times Book Prize for History, the finalist for the 2021 Mark Lynton History Prize, a 2021 MAAH Stone Book Award short list selection, a 2021 Cundill History Prize short list selection, and named a best book for 2020 by Ms., Time, Foreign Affairs, Black Perspectives, the Undefeated and Smithsonian. Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018), was winner of the Organization of American Historians Liberty Legacy Award, the American Historical Association Littleton-Griswold Prize, the American Society for Legal History John Phillip Reid book award, and a Baltimore City Historical Society Scholars honor for 2020. She is also author of All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture 1830-1900 (2007) and a coeditor of Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (University of North Carolina Press (2015), together with many articles and essays.
Professor Jones is a public historian, writing for broader audiences at the New York Times, Washington Post, the Atlantic, USA Today, Public Books, Talking Points Memo, Politico, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Time. She is an exhibition curator for “Reframing the Color Line” and “Proclaiming Emancipation” at the William L. Clements Library, and an expert consultant for museum, film and video productions with the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, the Charles Wright Museum of African American History, PBS American Experience, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Netflix, and Arte (France.)
C. Andrew McGadney
C. Andrew “Andy” McGadney is the 20th president of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He joined the College in July 2021.
A native of Connecticut, Andy McGadney earned his BA at Wesleyan University, majoring in Sociology and African American Studies. He later earned a Master of Public Administration and Policy from Columbia University and an EdD in Higher Education Management from the University of Pennsylvania, writing his dissertation on “Crisis Management at Small Liberal Arts Colleges: Perspectives on Presidential Decision Making.” Prior to his appointment at Knox College, he served as Vice President and Dean of Student Advancement at Colby College, following three years as Colby’s Vice President and Secretary of the College, a role that made him the principal liaison to the Board of Trustees.
While at Colby, McGadney provided strategic vision in realizing the College’s signature initiative, DavisConnects, funded with a $25 million donor gift. DavisConnects is a global liberal arts model that affords every Colby student a set of integrated research, internship and global experiences designed to enhance the academic experience and prepare students for post-graduate success.
As Vice President for University Advancement at Clark University in Worcester, MA, a Colleges that Change Lives institution, McGadney led fundraising efforts and instituted new infrastructure to plan, launch, and execute a $125 million comprehensive campaign. He also led efforts to improve student and alumni affinity at Clark. Earlier, he began his work in higher education as Director of Development and a Major Gift Officer at his alma mater, Wesleyan, on whose Board of Trustees he has served since 2018.
Fritz Schroeder
Fritz Schroeder became Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations in October 2012 and has served Johns Hopkins for more than 23 years in a series of senior management roles.
He provides leadership and oversight for all fundraising and alumni efforts of the university and Johns Hopkins Medicine, and serves as the institution’s chief fundraising officer. He was responsible for planning and executing the recently concluded Rising to the Challenge campaign, which received more than $6 billion in commitments.
Schroeder joined Johns Hopkins in 1996 as Director of Annual Giving and became Executive Director of Development and Alumni Relations in 2000. During this time he had responsibility for alumni outreach and for annual giving programs, serving as the Executive Director of the Alumni Association.
Emma Snyder
A Yale University graduate and former executive director of Washington’s PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Emma Snyder is the owner and operator of The Ivy Bookstore, which she purchased in 2019.
“An anchor bookstore like The Ivy has the potential to develop collaborative projects that help weave books into the social fabric of Baltimore,” said Snyder, a Baltimore native. “I’m incredibly excited to explore those possibilities.”
She manages two locations: The Ivy Bookshop on Falls Road and Bird in Hand Café and Bookstore in Charles Village. Snyder hopes to provide a selection of The Ivy’s titles for local tea shops, food stores and other establishments that have lacked the infrastructure to sell books alongside their regular merchandise.
“Books are the best things that human beings have ever created,” Snyder said. “I want to create little pockets of them all around the city.”