Cleaster Whitehurst-Mims, a sharecropper’s daughter, was born in Enterprise, Alabama. She is an extraordinary and innovative educator, political activist, founder and chief executive office of the Cleaster Mims International Boarding School (1990-2010), author, and philanthropist. She received the President’s Points of Light Award for her volunteerism in 2000. Dr. Mims worked her way through college as a wife and mother and graduated cum laude from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was the first female, African American graduate, and professor at Xavier. Her publications include The Tenant House, Bridge to Freedom, The Black Mother’s Agony, Mirroring the Moment, and her autobiography – One Peanut at a Time. The Black Mother’s Agony (1982) is a narrative inspired by the killing of sixteen black teenage boys in Atlanta and tossing of their bodies in the Chattahoochee River (1981). Out of the writer’s empirical and cognitive knowledge comes history and truth, pain and hope. – Allie Whitehurst, PhD