In January, Dr. Sam Lemon was inducted into the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Spirit Hall of Fame by the Media Fellowship House and the Media Area NAACP. Lemon, the director of the MS in Business and Organizational Leadership, was selected because of his involvement in causes that reflect the spirit of Dr. King and the mission of the sponsoring organizations.

He is a published author who wrote two books that explore the African American experience: Go Stand Upon the Rock (2014), a fact-based novel about the lives of Lemon’s enslaved ancestors; and The Case That Shocked the Country: The unquiet deaths of Vida Robare and Alexander McClay Williams (2017), which details the case of a 16-year-old African American boy who was wrongly convicted of murder.