Hi! My name is Rev. Harry Williams. My friends call me “OG Rev” or simply “Rev.” (You can find my website at: theogrev.com.) I can point back to a moment when my entire life changed. In 1990, I saw author Taylor Branch interviewed on television. He had just released a book called, “Parting The Water: America In The King Years 1955-1963.” Intrigued by his recollections on that panel show, I picked up the book. It was 1088 pages long but I couldn’t put it down until I reached the index.

The book so fascinated me that in 1992, I made a pilgrimage to the southern states to retrace the steps taken by the warriors in Branch’s book. What I found out was that the people who fought for freedom and equality were ordinary folks; barbers, preachers, school teachers, students, maintenance workers, etc. spurred on by a dream. It wasn’t long after my return from that journey that I accepted a call to ministry which encompassed the passages I had read and the people whom I’d met courtesy of Parting The Waters. In the years since, I have saved people trapped in human trafficking, fed the hungry, clothed those without shoes, preached the principles of nonviolence to convicted murderers and fought for justice for the falsely convicted. Much of that I owe to that one book.

In 1999, my first book No Easy Walk: The Dramatic Journey of African-Americans was published by InterVarsity Press. There have been a number of books since then, each of them focused on eradicating misunderstanding, violence and inequality from the world.

I was walking down Lombard Street in San Francisco one night when the idea for a novel came to me. The book takes place in Mississippi at the height of the civil rights movement. In 1967, Mississippi was a closed society where people who pressed for voting rights could end up dangling from the short end of a rope. Ironically, The great civil rights leaders did not win the day for Mississippi, the most segregated state in the nation. It was brave sharecroppers and the grassroots activists who risked and lost everything for the cause of freedom. I want to tell their story. I want to go back into the mouth of what was once the belly of the beast. I want to travel to the land of burning cross to extract a story that will be concretized into a novel called, “House Burning Down.”

I leave for Jackson Mississippi on March 4th. I have purchased my airline ticket. However, I have yet to book the hotel room. I will also need funds for food and transportation when I touch down in Mississippi. I estimate the remaining cost to be about $1,000. I believe that this book will help heal divisions and promote empathy and compassion. I need the opportunity to do boots on the ground research to bring it to reality. Will you become a part of this dream? The first ten people to support this dream with $100 or more will be recognized by name in the acknowledgement section of this book when it is published.