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Black History Month 2023 Salute: Celebrating New Mount Zion Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, Inc.

2/11/2023

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Quick Facts
Name: New Mount Zion Baptist Church
Address: 9550 Shepherd Road, Dallas, Texas 75243
Phone number: 214.341.6459
Website: www.nmzb.org/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nmzbc1598/streams
Pastor: Dr. Tommy L. Brown, installed on Nov. 9, 2014; President of the Baptist Ministers Union of Dallas and Vicinity 
First Lady: Ruth "Nell" Brown; 2nd Vice President of the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America Minister Wives and Widows Auxiliary  

Year Founded: January 1946
Unique Service: GriefShare Affiliate

In September 2022, I joined New Mount Zion Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, and am celebrating this dynamic community of faith. during Black History Month 2023.

My first encounter with this church was more than 15 years ago, when one of my then “little” nephews visited me one summer. I needed childcare support and New Mount Zion’s Day Care Center was highly recommended by one of my clients, Mrs. Marilyn Calhoun. It worked out perfectly and they took good care of my nephew.

Fast forward to May 2022, when my mentor and former Abilene Christian University media law professor, Dr. Charlie Marler, died in Abilene, Texas. I sought grief counseling through the national GriefShare program. New Mount Zion is listed among the virtual options. Even though my work schedule conflicted with the virtual meetings and I could not attend, I received a phone call from one of the church’s GriefShare organizers, Mrs. Barbara Kelly (see photo above). She was very supportive and prayed with me over the death of Dr. Marler, who “ordered” me to go back to school to become a historian in African American History. (You can read about my new academic journey here). Even though I found another option for grief counseling, Kelly and several others followed up with me. This got my attention and I started visiting the church intermittently. 

​Just as my history graduate courses were starting, I decided New Mount Zion was the place for me because of its caring environment and powerful preaching by Dr. Tommy L. Brown, the pastor. Dr. Brown and his wife, First Lady Ruth “Nell” Brown, (see photos above) are dedicated to serving the church and being beacons of light in their respective communities. I have been especially impressed with their commitment to the youth through college scholarships and a variety of outreach events. Their online services on YouTube gave me strength when I could not get to the building, especially during the hectic first semester of my Ph.D.  studies at the University of North Texas (UNT).

Finally, I have received encouragement and prayers whenever I asked for them and even when I did not. My goal is to earn a Ph.D. specializing in African American History in Texas. I am excited about my new church family! Please join me in celebrating New Mount Zion Baptist Church!

View Regina's Selected Black History Posts:
Reporter's Notebook: Covering the Alamo’s Historic Reveal for Texas Highways Magazine

​'Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr' Author Dr. Michael Williams Commemorates the 50th Anniversary

EXCLUSIVE: 53 years after attending Dr. King's funeral at the behest of Ann Arbor, Michigan officials, meet the Black man who was president of the NAACP Youth Council and whose name never made the newspapers in 1968 (Online Audio Documentary)

8 Women Historymakers

Veteran Dallas Morning News Columnist Norma Adams-Wade Still Making History

Saluting Kenny Ray DeWalt: Memphis Trombone Player for Rev. Al Green, The Bar-Kays

Updated: Do you know why Dr. King went to Memphis?

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Reporter's Notebook: Abilene's Ross Blasingame and Texas Highways Magazine

2/3/2023

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The first time I saw Abilene, Texas, was from the window of a Greyhound bus arriving from my native Memphis, Tennessee. I stepped off that bus determined to earn a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism and to become a broadcast journalist. During my undergraduate studies at Abilene Christian University (ACU), I landed a work-study job in the Maintenance Department.
 
That is where I first met Ross Blasingame. He is a true leader and a lot of fun to work with. Even after I graduated and moved on with my broadcast journalism career, I kept in touch with Ross through his son, Guy Blasingame. Fast forward to May 2022 when I returned to Abilene to attend the memorial service for Dr. Charlie Marler, my mentor and former media law professor, who died in May 2022.
 
Dr. Marlar was the person who encouraged me to go back to school to become a historian of African American History. Frankly, during that life-changing phone conversation in December 2020, it was more of an "order" rather than encouragement. In 1993, Dr. Marler selected me to become the first African American and the first woman recipient of ACU's prestigious Gutenberg Award.
 
While I was in Abilene in May 2022 for that sad event, I pitched a "My Hometown" profile of Ross to Texas Highways magazine. Here is the story. 

Read my other Texas Highways work here.

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Reporter's Notebook: Covering the Alamo’s Historic Reveal for Texas Highways Magazine

10/14/2022

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This Texas Highways’ web story is one of the most important news stories I have ever reported. It bolsters my award-winning journalism experience and current pursuit of the Ph.D. in history at the University of North Texas. Further, it contributes to research about Emily West and Hendrick Arnold, the two mixed-race African American historic figures who will forever be celebrated for their contributions to the Texas Revolution.

​Read about my journey to graduate school

​When I received an email from Texas Highways magazine asking if I would be interested in reporting about the Alamo’s first statues honoring African Americans who were part of the Texas Revolution, I squeezed it into my overcrowded schedule. What I discovered about them confirmed the wisdom of my late former Abilene Christian University mentor, Dr. Charlie Marler. During a phone call in December 2020, he said,“There aren’t enough African American historians. I want you to go back to school to become a historian!” ​

That was an order, not a request.

Read my memorial blog series about Dr. Marler

​I am so glad I listened and followed Dr. Marler’s order to go back to school and that he witnessed my graduate studies in the history program at the University of Texas at Arlington. That achievement was possible thanks to scholarships from Dr. W. Marvin Dulaney, the president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and he is also UTA professor emeritus. I look forward to researching, reporting, writing, and publishing many more neglected Black history stories for  multimedia platforms, magazines, newspapers, academic journals, books, and yes, my future dissertation!

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Ron Hadfield Celebrates 'Mondays with Dr. Charlie Marler'

6/12/2022

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My journalism professor, mentor, and guiding light, Dr. Charlie Marler, died May 27, 2022, and I am creating a series of blog posts about the impact he had on my and his other former students’ journalism and media careers. I am bringing his colleagues and others into the conversation as well.  In this post, I share the text of Ron Hadfield's remarks from the Celebration of Life service, held June 1, 2022, at the University Church of Christ, Abilene, TX.

Fourth Post: Ron Hadfield's Remarks at Dr. Charlie Marler's Celebration of Life Service, June 1, 2022

By Ron Hadfield
Dr. Charlie Marler shared my father’s first name and like him, married a girl from western Kentucky. They didn’t know each other in the 1930s, but Peggy Lucille Gambill of Fulton and Margaret Ann Pullen of Farmington grew up just 21 miles from one another, and were cut in many ways from the same cloth.​

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Dr. Charlie Marler was Regina Burns' former Communication Law professor and mentor.

​I have always said that the toughest editor in the Marler house wore a skirt to church on Sunday mornings. It’s true, you know. I saw it on the marked-up papers our son brought home from elementary school, which made him groan

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Ron Hadfield

Download the .PDF from the memorial service

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Cover of the program for the Celebration of Life service, held June 1, 2022, in Abilene, TX.

and his parents smile. ​His teacher, Peggy, was an uncompromising editor, but a loving one, and one of Tanner’s earliest encouragers that he become a writer, which he has. 

The Marlers shared Charlie’s 89th home-cooked birthday lunch with me last month, a feast including two of his favorites: barbeque pork ribs and a decadent chocolate cake. The conversation was candid and comforting, and it reminded me of moments years ago around the same table between this college student and two of the most godly people I’ve ever known.

Charlie Marler was my college professor, my professional mentor and my Texas Father, and not always in that order. I did not aspire to be a college professor, but in most other ways, my journalistic apple, so to speak, did not fall far from his tree.

By task and by default, we have found ourselves serving as unofficial historians for Abilene Christian, for a combined total of more than 100 years, a number I have a hard time grasping. 

That’s a privilege and a responsibility we enjoyed but took seriously: a blessing with, at times, a heavy yoke. In short, we learn about our shared alma mater, store the facts where others can hopefully find them later, and tell stories about its people and moments that matter most. 

​​Together, we have worked across the street at a place where the late, great academic dean Walter H. Adams once said he was a member of the church, at the institution where he was worth more to the church than anywhere else. We saw our work that way, as mission and vocation.

For just short of 40 years, I have had the often unenviable task of proofing and editing the best editor I knew. 

Early on, I felt like the relief pitcher waiting in the bullpen to follow Mariano Rivera, the nearly infallible and eventual Baseball Hall of Fame closer who wrapped up wins for the New York Yankees: When Mariano and Charlie were through being great at what they do, there was not much meat left on the proverbial barbeque pork rib.

Even at the end of his eighth decade, Charlie could work circles around most people half his age. His work ethic, like my own parents, has been an inescapable inheritance. Before his stroke and fall last week, he likely was online, at age 89, researching something to benefit his latest project for me or his own interest on ACU’s behalf.

Over time, kinks began to show in his armor, thanks to failing vision, a slightly leaky memory and the challenge of keeping up with "Associated Press Stylebook" editors who changed their mind on punctuation and usage like most of us change our socks. 

But he genuinely appreciated the extra set of eyes I brought to our relationship, and we regularly exchanged drafts of our work. I sought his counsel on difficult days, and he always wanted to know what was new in my world. Over time, my professor became my teammate and confidant. 
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​He never stopped being a champion of free speech yet always defended, even demanded, the truth be told as well. 

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Photo courtesy of The Portal to Texas History, https://bit.ly/3zvyC5q

​Ours was not unlike the relationship I came to enjoy with the late Dr. John C. Stevens, ACU’s eighth president and another unofficial historian who spent half a century on campus as professor and administrator. The three of us collaborated on two history books, and on projects small and large, including those for an ambitious Centennial that took decades to plan, 12 months to celebrate and years to recover ​from.

The ironies never failed to awe me. Dr. Marler was the newspaper advisor and Dr. John the president during my college days and two tours of duty as editor of The Optimist. I probably kept both of them on their toes with investigative stories and youthfully enthusiastic editorials that took no prisoners. Years later, though, I found myself as Stevens’ golf partner many Saturday mornings and the rest of the time, as Charlie’s storyteller sidekick. 

Dr. John and Dr. Marler, fellow members of this church, each died in the month of May, now 15 years apart. My memories of them, like those described so eloquently by James Earl Jones in the iconic baseball film "Field of Dreams," are so thick today that I, too, have to brush them away from my face. 

​Mitch Albom, the best writer in my hometown of Detroit – and most other hometowns – wrote a top-selling book several years ago titled "Tuesdays With Morrie," a touching account of the time he spent with a beloved former college professor dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. In the final chapter, Albom asks:
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Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud shine? If you are lucky enough to find your way to such teachers, you will always find your way back. Sometimes it is only in your head. Sometimes it is right alongside their beds.

​The teaching, Albom says, always goes on.

​​The last few years, I was fortunate to have regular meetings over lunch with Charlie, in addition to countless calls from his cell phone, which made me laugh because caller ID showed each to be from “Sweetwater, Texas” although he was never there. We met on other days as well, depending on Peggy’s trips to the hairdresser or lunches with her friends.

​I told myself those gatherings were my Mondays With Marler, although there was no impending health issue, only sacred time with a mentor who had increasing trouble – like many of us as we age – getting up and down from his chair. His mind was as sharp as his wit. ​

​For some reason, I had the overwhelming thought during the most recent lunch that it might be our last, and it was. That particular Monday With Marler was a bright day, the grass never greener and roses never more red outside the windows in the sun room where he worked and held court with me, and for years before, with students on Fridays in his Opinion Writing class.

Dr. John would often exclaim the words, “We shall not see his like again!” on more than one occasion about a passing dignitary or world leader, a paraphrase of Shakespeare’s famous line in Hamlet. Truer words were never spoken about each of them, as I shall not see their likes again, these two people who shaped me like no others.

With Charlie’s passing, the circle of unofficial historians for this university has become uncomfortably small. Thankfully, my life and work have been enriched by these two exacting but benevolent giants who shared their knowledge, took the time to know me and envision me at my best, and showed me the way there. 

Especially this dear man and mentor, my Texas Father, whose teaching goes on. 

Learn More:
Dr. Cheryl Mann Bacon Celebrates the Life and Legacy of Dr. Charlie Marler 
​Journeying Through Grief: The Death of My Mentor, Dr. Charlie Marler

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Dr. Cheryl Mann Bacon Celebrates the Life and Legacy of Dr. Charlie Marler

6/11/2022

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My journalism professor, mentor, and guiding light, Dr. Charlie Marler, died May 27, 2022, and I am creating a series of blog posts about the impact he had on my and his other former students’ journalism and media careers. I am bringing his colleagues and others into the conversation as well.  In this post, I share the text of Dr. Cheryl Mann Bacon's remarks from the Celebration of Life service, held June 1, 2022, at the University Church of Christ, Abilene, TX.

Third Post: Dr. Cheryl Mann Bacon's Remarks at Dr. Charlie Marler's Celebration of Life Service, June 1, 2022

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Dr. Cheryl Mann Bacon
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Cover of the program for the Celebration of Life service, held June 1, 2022, in Abilene, TX.

Download the .PDF from the memorial service

​By Dr. Cheryl Mann Bacon
A few nights ago I was scrolling through Facebook posts by and about Dr. Marler and came across the post he wrote when I retired.  He began by recalling when we met – in the fall of 1978 – and continued to relate the details of our four-decade friendship. 

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Dr. Charlie Marler was Regina Burns' former Communication Law professor and mentor.

Charlie was my teacher. He chaired my master’s thesis.  He hired me to be his graduate assistant and to the JMC faculty. He was a part of the faculty I led when I succeeded him as chair. He was my elder, mentor, editor and friend.​

He concluded his post with four things he thought were important:
​• the love of civil discourse
• a passion for the First Amendment
• writing well and teaching others to write well
• and being a good mom. 
 

In the dozens of tributes from former students this past week, variations of those same themes emerged over and over.

Paul Anthony, a former Optimist editor who’s now a doctoral student himself, recalled a conversation in Doc’s office when he was working through his views on some difficult topics. 

He said Doc “never felt the need to make clear his own position. He knew that what I needed was an ear, not an opinion. The result was that I came away from those talks a more tolerant, more compassionate, more open-minded person.”

That was typical.  Charlie had no patience for shallow thinking, but he loved a challenging conversation with students or colleagues who might disagree with him – so long as they were thoughtful, had their facts right, and could be civil about it. 


Many students described that civility as kindness. The student who was struggling to pass received exactly the same kindness as the one he was encouraging to go to grad school, which he did frequently.

He often paraphrased Deuteronomy and said we must teach our students in the classrooms, the halls, the labs, our offices, the sidewalks, the parking lots and our homes.  His civility and kindness were like that, too.  Everywhere and at all times. 

Then there was his passion for the First Amendment.

I remember him vividly describing his visit to James Madison’s grave on the grounds of Montpelier, in Virginia.  When I had the chance to visit there a few years later and stood in that small family cemetery, I could just imagine the conversation that must have transpired in Charlie’s mind as he stood by the grave of his hero.

​Charlie understood that nothing else about our Constitutional form of government works if we fail to honor and protect those freedoms – of religion, speech, the press, and the right of the people to assemble and petition for redress of grievances.

Fact: Dr. Marler was inducted into the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association's Hall of Fame in 2003

He believed passionately that all truth is God’s truth – and if the truth is hidden or suppressed, then we cannot make informed decisions –about government, or religion, or life.  And he was all about making informed decisions.

​That passion inspired his philosophy of student journalism, which demanded absolute excellence of his students --- and occasionally drove university presidents absolutely crazy. 


​But he believed that if we want students to go out into the world prepared to speak truth to power,  well then they have to practice it -- here, now and unfettered. 

​His Optimist staffs consistently rose to the occasion because they knew he would go to the mat for them – and because disappointing him was unthinkable. 

At the heart of not disappointing Charlie was writing well. Professional journalists all over the country hear Doc’s voice in their ears when they recall that
• a lot is two words
• that and which are not interchangeable
• redundancy wastes the reader’s time
• concision doesn’t mean short – it means the shortest path to understanding
• Always cite your sources
• And my personal favorite – avoid dead construction. 

​Now, my friend Cole Bennett tells me that ‘dead construction’ is not a grammarian’s term.  They call passive constructions like ‘it is’ and ‘there are’ etc., ‘expletives’.  But Charlie called them dead.  I know this, because when he returned my 40-page graduate Comm Law paper I got a 98.  Not a 100, because somewhere on about page 23 I had used “It is” one time, and there in bright red capital letters, underlined twice, were the words:  AVOID DEAD CONSTRUCTION.

​The analogy merits chasing just a bit.  He called it dead because excellent writing should never have a vague subject and a passive verb.  Excellent writing, and an excellent Christian life should be focused, vibrant and alive. 

​Finally, Charlie wrote to me in that post about being a good mom.  Anyone who was around Charlie for even a little while knew that he adored Peggy, and he loved being a dad, and a grandfather.  He could not talk about family without his trademark twinkle.  Great journalism was important.  Family was more important.

​Lance Fleming, in his tribute last week wrote that when he sought Doc’s advice about a job change, “He agreed that my time on the road was better spent being at home with Jill, Ashley, and Ryan.”

For two years, Doc and Peggy had prayed every day for Rex, Lance and Jill’s oldest son, and for two years Doc ended every email or text to Lance with the words, “God, please kill Rex’s cancer.”

​On the morning after Rex died, Lance had this message from Doc. 

“Wow, God is good.  Rex is healed forever; you guys now have an even more special connection to heaven,” he wrote.  “You know hope is real. You will be finding new ways to touch Rex every day.”

So to Peggy, David, Todd, Scott and all the Marlers – and to all of us, I close with a very careful edit of Charlie’s own words:

​“Wow, God is good.  Charlie is healed forever.  We now have an even more special connection to heaven.   We know hope is real, and we will find new ways to hear Doc’s words in our ears every day.”

Learn More:
Journeying Through Grief: The Death of My Mentor, Dr. Charlie Marler
Mourning the Death of Dr. Charlie Marler, My ACU Professor and Mentor

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Journeying Through Grief: The Death of My Mentor, Dr. Charlie Marler

6/4/2022

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My journalism professor, mentor, and guiding light, Dr. Charlie Marler, died May 27, 2022, and I plan to write a series of blog posts about the impact he had on my and his other former students’ journalism and media careers. 

Second Post: Searching for Healing, June 4, 2022

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Grieving the death of my former Abilene Christian University professor and mentor, Dr. Charlie Marler, June 1, 2022. Photo by Levi Turner, ACU alumni.

I attended the June 1, 2022, Celebration of Life service (download the searchable .PDF). I offered my condolences to Peggy Marler and the rest of Dr. Charlie Marler’s family and colleagues at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. Each speaker trumpeted Marler's commitment to his family, academic scholarship, his faith, and the Abilene community through meaningful anecdotes and his favorite scripture in Philippians. I plan to post the text of some of the speakers' remarks as I receive them.​

Furthermore, this week, I visited ACU’s Journalism and Mass Communication Department to search for healing of my grief  through conversations with members of the JMC community and to celebrate my days as a former KACU announcer/JMC student. Meeting some of the current students and staff, as well as touring classrooms, offices, ACUTV, and the Morris+Mitchell student agency contributed to my healing journey. As the first Black person and the first woman to receive ACU's Gutenberg Award, which Marler created, touching familiar ground was a smart step.

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Additionally, I advanced my graduate history studies by meeting with two ACU librarians, Melinda Isbell and Laura Baker. They steered me to a wealth of resources and academic research strategies. Their invaluable guidance advanced my goal to fulfill Marler’s wish that I become a historian, specializing in African American history in Texas.

Moreover, due to a series of unplanned events, I met an ACU staffer, Evan Steele, who went out of his way to support my goals to honor Marler’s legacy, and also, become a Texas historian. Steele offered support and great foreign-language study tips, which will help me prepare for forthcoming Spanish exams for graduate school. 

All in all, I received an ocean of comfort from so many people, including Susan Perry, a long-time Abilene friend who alerted me to Marler's illness, which she found out about in an email from the University Church of Christ. I am so thankful to that church for its quick email blast. Additionally, I appreciate Susan for her fast communication to me, and to her brother, Greg Perry, for his support. If it had not been for them, I would not have known Marler was sick!​

Subsequently, this week was filled with overwhelming grief and loss. Nevertheless, I am navigating through the grief and charting new paths forward. Most of all, I am excited about the new people and resources that came into my life during my time in Abilene. I believe Marler had a hand in it.
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Previous post in the series: Mourning the Death of Dr. Charlie Marler, My ACU Professor and Mentor

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Mourning the Death of Dr. Charlie Marler, My ACU Professor and Mentor

5/31/2022

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My journalism professor, mentor, and guiding light, Dr. Charlie Marler, died May 27, 2022, and I plan to write a series of blog posts about the impact he had on my and his other former students’ journalism and media careers.

First Post: Shock and Grief, May 31, 2022

​     When I stepped out of a Greyhound bus in Abilene, Texas, in 1979, I was determined to earn a bachelor’s degree and become a broadcast journalist. I had no idea that one of my Abilene Christian University journalism professors would influence and redirect my career in the remarkable ways that the late Dr. Charlie Marler did. The long trip from my native Memphis, Tennessee, was a time of celebration and joy for numerous reasons. I was the first in my family to enroll in college. My family helped me pack all our hopes and dreams in the borrowed suitcases donated by my former junior high school guidance counselor, Viola O’Neil Cole, and Peggy and Geno Grandi. The Grandis gave me a part-time job during high school cleaning their East Memphis house. I had a scholarship from the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and the blessings and prayers of my beloved parents, Rowena H. Whiting, and Prince Whiting Jr. Moreover, the Tennessee to Texas bus trip was important to the community, including members of the Southside Church of Christ, and Mary and Myron Lowery, among many others. I knew a lot of people wanted me to succeed and I planned to accomplish just that.

     Marler was my Communication Law professor and at that time, chair of ACU’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communication. Before I graduated in 1983, I had landed a part-time job working in TV news at KRBC, which was Abilene’s NBC affiliate at that time. Further, I had already sold a story to CNN, which was pretty amazing for a greenhorn still in college. After graduation, I left Abilene to pursue new jobs in other states and returned a decade later to be honored with the Gutenberg Award. As time pressed forward, I kept in touch with Marler, and he shared some of the projects he was working on. Peggy Marler, his wife, always answered the phone with a kind voice and then said: “Here’s Charlie” and handed him the phone. Marler and I had long phone conversations about media-related topics, and he was always interested in my career and encouraged me.

     In 2019, we had an extended conversation about being multimedia specialists, which we both were. In December 2020, he basically ordered me to go back to school to become a historian, after I told him about my just-published Texas Highways magazine stories. I followed orders and he wrote recommendation letters to support my graduate history applications.

     Long-time Abilene friend, Susan Perry, alerted me May 25, 2022, that Marler was in ICU. I spoke with Peggy, and she updated me that he had had a stroke. I was sick with fear and asked her to please keep me informed. I prayed. She alerted me on May 27 via a text message that he had died. I was overcome with grief that day and inconsolable when I saw his picture on an Abilene funeral home’s website.

     I am coping with my grief by writing and rereading his graduate history recommendation letters. I just completed 12 graduate hours on a part-time basis at the University of Texas at Arlington, thanks to two fantastic scholarships from UTA Professor Emeritus and Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) President Dr. W. Marvin Dulaney. Further, I was accepted into the doctorate program at the University of North Texas. Marler knew of my progress and that I planned to start the doctorate, pending the best financial aid support I can receive, this fall. I am so glad I quickly followed his orders because he predicted I could leverage my journalism expertise as he did and make a significant contribution. I plan to specialize in African American history in Texas.

     Marler went above and beyond by making himself available to me and his other former students. He rejected the traditional patriarchal mindset of his generation and saw each student as capable of achieving more, and more, and more. He practiced what he preached by conducting scholarly research and continuing to write to the end of his life.

​     And lastly, he cared!

Please leave your comments to these questions: How did Dr. Marler impact your career and life? Have you ever experienced the death of a  mentor? How did you cope? 

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Dulaney Scholarship Launches History Graduate Studies at UT Arlington

11/10/2021

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​From Journalism to African American History in Texas

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UTA Professor Emeritus Dr. William Dulaney presented me with his family's scholarship, Aug. 17, 2021, at the African American Museum of Dallas. The scholarship is for fall 2021 history graduate courses at UTA. Photo by Melinda Knott.
I am proud to announce I was awarded a scholarship from the Dulaney Family Fund for my fall 2021 graduate studies in history at the University of Texas at Arlington. I received the scholarship in August 2021 from UTA Professor Emeritus William Dulaney, Ph.D., who is also Deputy Director/COO of the African American Museum of Dallas.
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I earned a perfect score on my Caribbean history map quiz, thanks to lots of studying, tutoring, and backup map review from friends Melinda and John Knott. See the quiz in the link below. Photo taken 10.26.21 by BreAna Whiting,

Download my map quiz here.

Currently, I am enrolled part-time in the master’s in history program at UTA. My long-term goal is to earn a doctorate degree specializing in African American history in Texas. I decided to follow the advice of my former Abilene Christian University Communication Law Professor Dr. Charles Marler, who encouraged me to pursue becoming an African American historian. He said there aren't enough Black historians and that I had the wherewithal to become one. Wow! He shared that advice after I told him about two of my Texas Highways magazine stories.

I listened and am almost finished with my first semester. Returning to graduate school was definitely the right step. The courses are intellectually satisfying and I am well-suited to part-time graduate work.
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Image of Dr. Charles Marler, from The Portal to Texas History, https://bit.ly/3C7lYal

Watch video of Dr. Marler discussing libel.

Narrative: The heart of history and journalism

​Just like in journalism, the narrative or story is at the heart of a history thesis or argument. And, as importantly, I use my award-winning journalism expertise in fascinating new ways in my history courses. For example, I recently posted two summaries of two history book reviews on a discussion board. I wrote several historiography papers that analyzed various themes. In each instance, my journalism background served me well in synthesizing complex information.

One of the reasons Dr. Marler advised me to consider graduate work in history is because he had studied "journalism and Black history at the University of Missouri-Columbia," which he wrote about in my recommendation letter.  I was so impressed that he had studied Black history in graduate school. He also shared that well-known axiom, "Journalism is the first rough draft of history."

When I graduated with my M.A. in Journalism Administration degree from the University of Memphis, I sensed I would return to a university to learn more about the art and craft of the narrative. This time, I am aiming for a doctorate in history because of the abundant overlooked, underreported, and forgotten African American history in Texas content yet to be discovered, researched, and published. I look forward to one day researching, writing and teaching that history on all platforms, in and outside of academia. Meanwhile, I keep helping organizations and clients tell important stories while enjoying a new take on a familiar ride. 
Learn More:
Read my other UTA graduate school recommendations:
  • Dr. Lewis V. Baldwin
  • Matt Joyce
  • Dr. Dan Lattimore
  • Listen to Dr. Leonard Moore, who is the author of "Teaching Black History to White People" and also the George Littlefield Professor of American History at UT-Austin, speaking on KERA Radio 11.08.21.
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Texas Highways' Web Story: 'Men of Change'

8/24/2021

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Thanks to Senior Managing Editor Matt Joyce for another dynamic Texas Highways magazine web assignment. In July 2021, I visited the African American Museum in Dallas as part of my story about Houston artist Cary Fagan's photographic work honoring the late Texas native and legendary choreographer/dancer Alvin Ailey. Fagan's images are in the Smithsonian Institution's 'Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth' exhibit, at the Museum through Sept. 12, 2021. You may read my story here. Please read my other Texas  Highways' works here.

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“Delta Epiphany Spotlights Robert F. Kennedy’s Enduring Social Change Legacy” (Online Audio Documentary)

6/11/2021

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Based on Ellen Meacham’s acclaimed 2018 book, “Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi,” award-winning multimedia editor and journalist Regina L. Burns executive-produced, reported, and edited the online audio documentary, “Delta Epiphany Spotlights Robert F. Kennedy’s Enduring Social Change Legacy.” This month on the 53rd anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, Meacham’s book is the tour guide for this online audio documentary. ​

Audio Interviews
Burns embedded audio interviews she recorded in 2018 of Meacham and Michael White, one of the then-children whose Mississippi Delta home Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-New York) visited in 1967, with pivotal moments from Meacham’s book. Burns also interviewed Dallas, Texas-based Melinda Guravich, daughter-in-law of the late Greenville, Mississippi-based photographer Dan Guravich, whose photographs graced the book’s front and back covers

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Melinda Guravich, Ellen Meacham, and Michael White met after Meacham's June 18, 2018, book talk at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Photograph by Regina L. Burns.
​​Kennedy’s 1968 Presidential Campaign
“Delta Epiphany Spotlights Robert F. Kennedy’s Enduring Social Change Legacy” explores Meacham’s book through NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund attorney Marian Wright’s plea to help the starving people in the Mississippi Delta to Kennedy’s arrival in Jackson, Mississippi, and his heartbreaking anti-poverty tour. Meacham traced the horrible human hunger Kennedy witnessed and the quick actions he took to provide aid as well as the subsequent impact of Kennedy’s anti-poverty awareness campaign, which influenced his decision to run for president in 1968. After he was assassinated on June 6, 1968, many other people carried Kennedy’s anti-poverty work forward, despite challenges and naysayers. 

COVID-19 and SNAP
Approximately 25 million SNAP-- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- recipients are now eligible for additional emergency assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this year in 2021, the USDA said it would provide the increased emergency aid to SNAP participants who had reached the maximum benefit level and had not already received the increased benefits, which Congress approved in 2020.

​Purchase Requirement Dropped for Food Stamps
SNAP’s roots date to 1939 and the Great Depression. Back then and recently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people stood in bread lines as hunger swept the country. Meacham provided abundant signposts of Kennedy’s social change journey, and his ongoing influence on various anti-hunger programs such as the 1977 federal legislation that dropped the purchase requirement for food stamps. Prior to that legislation, food stamps had to be purchased. Meacham documented that Kennedy learned, during his ‘Delta Epiphany’ tour, people struggling to put food on the table lacked the financial resources to buy food stamps.

Audio documentary (19:06) and transcript download (.PDF) are below.

de_61121_transcript_regina_l_burns.pdf
File Size: 277 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

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Dan Guravich captured photographs of Sen. Robert Kennedy's 1967Mississippi Delta anti-poverty fact-finding tour. Guravich's image is from Delta State University's website, https://bit.ly/3gizVe0.
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Melinda Guravich and her husband David Guravich provided Ellen Meacham with digital versions of photographs taken by Dan Guravich, who was one of the photographers with Sen. Robert Kennedy in the Mississippi Delta in 1967. David Guravich is Dan's son.

Remembering RFK's trip to the Mississippi Delta (Article and "When D.C. Came to the Delta" Video by Junior Walters)


Learn More
● Regina’s Blog
● A Short History of SNAP
● COLIN KAEPERNICK AND DR. ANTHONY FAUCI TO RECEIVE ROBERT F. KENNEDY HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD
● Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights​
● The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

Copyright © June 11, 2021, Regina L. Burns, Harvest Reapers Communications. All Rights Reserved.

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    Image_ReginaLBurns

    About the Author:

    Regina L. Burns, M.A., Project+, is an award-winning multimedia editor and journalist, specializing in Black history and African American stories at Harvest Reapers Communications. Her work has been published in Texas Highways magazine, WFAA-TV, The Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as well as The Commercial Appeal, the Tri-State Defender and The Flyer, among others.

    She previously worked for a variety of news media organizations as an editor and journalist, including The Associated Press in Mississippi and Texas. She was news director at WLOK-AM and WGKX KIX-106 FM in Memphis. Learn more

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