Aswad Walker, associate pastor of the Shrine of the Black Madonna (Houston), is a lecturer in the University of Houston’s Department of African American Studies, Associate Director of the Texas Southern University Urban Research and Resource Center, Associate Editor for the Defender Media Group (Houston Defender) and author of five books—The 100^th Monkey: Three Tales of Spiritual Revolution (January 2013); Princes Shall Come Out of Egypt: A Comparative Study of the Theological and Ecclesiological Views of Marcus Garvey and Albert B. Cleage Jr. (August 2012), Weapons of Mass Distraction: A Other Sermons for a New World Order (September 2004), Annual 0-1 (June 2020) and Stand Your Ground (June 2020). Aswad’s writings have also appeared in Dr. Jawanza Clark’s book Albert Cleage Jr. and the Black Madonna and Child, Palgrave Macmillan (2016); the Journal of Black Studies, volume 39, number 2, November 2008; the Frederick Douglass Encyclopedia, “Harper’s Ferry,” Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, December 2009; UJIMA Magazine, “Making History Today,” University of Houston, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences’ African American Studies Program, Summer 2003; and the Defender Newspaper, www.defendernetwork.com, 2006 – Present. Aswad earned his Master of Divinity from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, and a B.S. in Advertising from the University of Texas at Austin, where as a Heman Sweatt Service Award-winning student leader, he co-edited the Black student newspaper, The Griot.