Tombolo Books in partnership with the African American Heritage Association and Allendale United Methodist Church are honored to present a conversation with scholar, writer, and literary critic Dr. Deborah G. Plant!

Dr. Plant and Gwendolyn Reese, President of the African American Heritage Association will discuss Plant’s latest monograph, Of Greed and Glory: In Pursuit of Freedom for All.

The event will take place at Allendale United Methodist Church located at 3803 Haines Rd N, St. Petersburg, FL 33703.

“As indispensable to understanding the Americas as Edward E. Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told. Of Greed and Glory powerfully demonstrates that though we as Black Americans are far from faultless in some of our most egregious behavior on the mean plantations and streets of antebellum and modern America, we nonetheless have had to grow our dignity beneath the pitiless boot of those who looked into the tiny faces of our infants and saw only dollar signs. Powerful and necessary.”
— Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Award winning author of The Color Purple and Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

Deborah G. Plant is an African American and Africana Studies Independent Scholar, Writer, and Literary Critic specializing in the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston. She is editor of the New York Times bestseller Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston and the author of Alice Walker: A Woman for Our Times, a philosophical biography. She is also editor of The Inside Light: New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston, and the author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit and Every Tub Must Sit On Its Own Bottom: The Philosophy and Politics of Zora Neale Hurston. She holds MA and Ph. D. degrees in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Plant played an instrumental role in founding the University of South Florida’s Department of Africana Studies, where she chaired the department for five years. She presently resides in Florida.

Gwendolyn Reese is President the African American Heritage Association of St. Petersburg, FL, Inc. and CEO of Peaten Reese Peaten Consulting, Inc. She serves on the St. Petersburg Community Planning & Preservation Commission and co-chairs the Community Remembrance Project Coalition Pinellas Remembers.

In 2015 Ms. Reese was the recipient of the 2015 MLK Leadership Award presented by the National Council of Negro Women and was recognized by Congresswoman Kathy Castor for more than 40 years of community activism and leadership. In February 2018 she was the recipient of the inaugural Peggy Peterman Award presented by the Legacy Group for her weekly column on local African American History in the Weekly Challenger newspaper, in May of that year she received the Founders Tribute from the 2020 Plan and in October 2018 she was the recipient of the Pinellas Opportunity Council’s “Presidents Award.”