Celebrating 60/40!

Last Thursday evening, I celebrated two very significant milestones in my life with you -- my 60th birthday on July 10th (I can't believe that number! I am not feeling that number, but I am grateful.) and the 40th anniversary of my call to ministry.

In 1970, while astudent at Chapman University in Orange, California, I sensed a call to Christian ministry and began my journey. I was ordained in 1976 after completing seminary at Duke University.

We had a fun evening of music, food, stories and embarrassing pictures of me! Two special guests from Tougaloo College -- president Dr. Beverly Wade Hogan and board member Isaac K. Byrd, Jr., were there.

Tougaloo is a very special place for my family. My Dad, along with my mother, were graduates of the Southern Christian Institute that merged with Tougaloo College in 1954. My twin sisters are also graduates of Tougaloo.

My Dad's funeral service was held in the Woodworth Chapel on the campus in 2004. It was in this beautiful little chapel where important meetings and gatherings of the Civil Rights and Women's movements were held. Great icons like Ralph Bunche, Julian Bond, Robert Kennedy, Medger Evers, Joan Baez, Fannie Lou Hammer and Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke here.

Special thanks to all those who made donations -- in honor of my milestones -- to the Clyde Cullen Jackson Scholarship Fund at Tougalee College. I am very proud that we have raised over $20,000.