About the Author
|
Dr. Clarencia R. Newsome-Shade, LCSW, M.Ed., Th.d, is an ordained minister and has worked extensively in education and healthcare. She is a psychotherapist in private practice and an organizational consultant offering employee assistance for businesses and Christian counseling. She empowers ministers to take care of their mental and emotional health so they can serve the people of God. Through seminars and workshops, she educates people about wellbeing and spiritual strength. She provides consultation for groups and leaders of churches so they can continue to guide churches. She makes frequent media appearances to offer her ministry. Rev. Shade embraced Jesus Christ as Savior in her youth and received her first Missionary license in 1987 in the Churches of God in Christ. She has held multiple leadership positions including District Supervising Missionary. This appointment involves overseeing the ministry work of women in the New Garden State Jurisdiction, in the State of New Jersey.
Professionally, Dr. Shade formerly worked as the Director of Student Support Services as the head of a multimillion-dollar substance abuse prevention program for the public schools in Newark, New Jersey. She managed a staff of 300 with three supervisors from the Central Office. The grants oversight, budget and reporting to the U.S. Department of Education while maintaining the local budget was among her many responsibilities. She is certified as a Family Therapist, a Substance Abuse prevention specialist while earning a Master’s in Educational Leadership (M.Ed.) and several other educational certifications. In addition, she holds a dual MSW degree with a concentration in clinical and administrative social work. This qualifies her to provide clinical supervision to social workers to help them fulfill licensing requirements. She also qualifies as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker currently in private clinical practice. She has received and earned a Doctorate in Theology. She uses all her gifts including singing. She has appeared off-Broadway, in the play Faith Journey. She has done studio work as a backup singer and recorded one gospel album. She now sings with the internationally Grammy award-winning choir, Rev. Stef and Jubilation Choir. Her favorite scripture is Proverbs 3:5,6. Dr. Shade is the author of the book, Conquering Soul Holes and many articles. She is the proud mother of two adult children and four grandchildren. |
Rev. Dr. Imani-Sheila Newsome-Camara & her sister, Dr. Clarencia Newsome-Shade
FOREWORD
It is harmful to live with ghosts. They linger in the shadows nibbling away at the clarity of our lives. We must bring them out of the shadows and into the light of life. We must give them flesh and blood, turning them into allies for well-being rather than thieves who rob us of crucial information.
So, we must resurrect the dead, especially of those we love. We resurrect our loved ones so we can rehearse the impact they had on our lives. As we dwell with them and the memories they invoke, we understand that they lived before us, they lived with us, and they live in us. Then, as allies, they give us lives to reflect upon and impart those lessons to others.
I admit I was comfortable with the ghost of our father, Clarence William Newsome, Esquire. Not all ghosts are scary. He was allowed to flicker around the edges of my life. I knew he was handsome, smart, and dedicated to helping others. I gained more respect for the Newsome name as I looked through my father's old yearbook at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia, when I studied there or mentioned his name in that city. Any mention of his name was met with high regard and praise. I felt close to the shadow of the man, and that was enough. Still, the little I knew of him I held with pride never relinquishing fragments of his story or his last name. With the acquisition of my B.S. degree from Virginia Union, every scholarship, award, degree, and professional title I obtained in Education, and Theological Studies, I paid homage to my father's ghost.
On the other hand, my sister, Rev. Dr. Clarencia Rene Shade, is the ghost hunter. Our father, Clarence William Newsome, Esquire, with his divorce from our mother, Dr. Cora F. Duncan, his relocation to the south, and his death, May 24, 1963, was a ghost to both my sister and me. After looking in an old suitcase that held pictures, yearbooks, and documents about our father, Clarencia had the courage to bring our father into the light of life. Methodically, she began to look back over our father's life beyond the photographs and documents she found. Over the years, while making her climb to excellence as an agent of healing and justice as a renowned therapist and leader, she devoted time to research. She called libraries, explored archives, dug up family roots, made telephone calls, sent emails and texts, ultimately piecing together an image of a man neither of us had known. The result of all that work and unnamed sacrifices is the recreated legacy of our father, Clarence William Newsome, Esquire in this book, Outspoken.
This book is also about the life of my sister Clarencia. Our entire family, especially her children Leon and Sharmonique, their children, and her niece, Mariama, will learn about the power of overcoming. In it, readers will find vignettes about the complexities of love, family building, and resilience, as exhibited in her life.
I also view this work as a gift to me. My story is woven into her story, and I thank my sister for that. She has recorded conversations I never participated in with my mother, stories I cannot tell, memories I do not have, and a few I do. However, I do remember the words that came from my stepdad about my father. I am blessed by Clarencia’s focus on familial stories that still have an impact on my life. Finally, this book about my father inspires me to continue my work as a Christian theologian and minister who cares for others. All my work that emerges from years of teaching in undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as a major seminary, has been undergirded by my father’s legacy of civil rights and justice work.
Outspoken is a breakthrough book that follows the work of historians of the modern Civil Rights Era who have recovered the life stories of women, men, and children who gave the Movement its momentum. There is so much of this work yet to be done by family members, community members, colleagues, and scholars. Perhaps this book will inspire others to begin researching and writing similar books.
The legacy Rev. Dr. Shade uncovers is not only for me, our family or in service to modern Civil Rights Era scholarship. I hope others use her work as a blueprint for those who are steering through the continuing maze of work attached to advocacy for civil and human rights in a complex global community in the twenty-first century. Outspoken offers a glimpse of the power of vocation and voice in service to justice for those who are in the process of discovering both. Well done, sister. Thank you for paving the way for our father's legacy to live on for generations.
Rev. Dr. Imani-Sheila Newsome-Camara
Christian Theologian
Pastor-Teacher
Greenwood Memorial United Methodist Church,
Boston, Massachusetts
So, we must resurrect the dead, especially of those we love. We resurrect our loved ones so we can rehearse the impact they had on our lives. As we dwell with them and the memories they invoke, we understand that they lived before us, they lived with us, and they live in us. Then, as allies, they give us lives to reflect upon and impart those lessons to others.
I admit I was comfortable with the ghost of our father, Clarence William Newsome, Esquire. Not all ghosts are scary. He was allowed to flicker around the edges of my life. I knew he was handsome, smart, and dedicated to helping others. I gained more respect for the Newsome name as I looked through my father's old yearbook at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia, when I studied there or mentioned his name in that city. Any mention of his name was met with high regard and praise. I felt close to the shadow of the man, and that was enough. Still, the little I knew of him I held with pride never relinquishing fragments of his story or his last name. With the acquisition of my B.S. degree from Virginia Union, every scholarship, award, degree, and professional title I obtained in Education, and Theological Studies, I paid homage to my father's ghost.
On the other hand, my sister, Rev. Dr. Clarencia Rene Shade, is the ghost hunter. Our father, Clarence William Newsome, Esquire, with his divorce from our mother, Dr. Cora F. Duncan, his relocation to the south, and his death, May 24, 1963, was a ghost to both my sister and me. After looking in an old suitcase that held pictures, yearbooks, and documents about our father, Clarencia had the courage to bring our father into the light of life. Methodically, she began to look back over our father's life beyond the photographs and documents she found. Over the years, while making her climb to excellence as an agent of healing and justice as a renowned therapist and leader, she devoted time to research. She called libraries, explored archives, dug up family roots, made telephone calls, sent emails and texts, ultimately piecing together an image of a man neither of us had known. The result of all that work and unnamed sacrifices is the recreated legacy of our father, Clarence William Newsome, Esquire in this book, Outspoken.
This book is also about the life of my sister Clarencia. Our entire family, especially her children Leon and Sharmonique, their children, and her niece, Mariama, will learn about the power of overcoming. In it, readers will find vignettes about the complexities of love, family building, and resilience, as exhibited in her life.
I also view this work as a gift to me. My story is woven into her story, and I thank my sister for that. She has recorded conversations I never participated in with my mother, stories I cannot tell, memories I do not have, and a few I do. However, I do remember the words that came from my stepdad about my father. I am blessed by Clarencia’s focus on familial stories that still have an impact on my life. Finally, this book about my father inspires me to continue my work as a Christian theologian and minister who cares for others. All my work that emerges from years of teaching in undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as a major seminary, has been undergirded by my father’s legacy of civil rights and justice work.
Outspoken is a breakthrough book that follows the work of historians of the modern Civil Rights Era who have recovered the life stories of women, men, and children who gave the Movement its momentum. There is so much of this work yet to be done by family members, community members, colleagues, and scholars. Perhaps this book will inspire others to begin researching and writing similar books.
The legacy Rev. Dr. Shade uncovers is not only for me, our family or in service to modern Civil Rights Era scholarship. I hope others use her work as a blueprint for those who are steering through the continuing maze of work attached to advocacy for civil and human rights in a complex global community in the twenty-first century. Outspoken offers a glimpse of the power of vocation and voice in service to justice for those who are in the process of discovering both. Well done, sister. Thank you for paving the way for our father's legacy to live on for generations.
Rev. Dr. Imani-Sheila Newsome-Camara
Christian Theologian
Pastor-Teacher
Greenwood Memorial United Methodist Church,
Boston, Massachusetts
