Crystal J. Lucky

I teach 19th and 20th century African American literature, including fugitive slave narratives, contemporary novels of slavery, works of the Harlem Renaissance, the African American short story and the works of Toni Morrison and August Wilson. (I am pictured standing in front of August Wilson’s childhood home in Pittsburgh, PA!!)

While my teaching range is somewhat broad, my research interests are focused on the narrative and cultural productions of black women preachers. In 2016, I published a critical edition of the autobiography of the Rev. Mrs. Charlotte Riley, an AME preacher born into South Carolina slavery: A Mysterious Life and Calling. My current book project, On the Threshing Floor: Representations of African American Women’s Piety, traces the image of the pious black woman, whom I define as dedicated to enacting and promoting the tenets of Protestant Christianity, as both an historical and a cultural figure from her appearance in autobiographical and expository writing and visual images of the nineteenth century through her reinvention in American literary and popular cultural forms throughout the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century. My work intersects with my role as the pastor of Sword of the Spirit Church, where I serve with my husband.

I am also working on a second book project. He Came Back to Get Us tells the compelling love story of Debbie, Michael, and Michael Africa, Jr., three members of MOVE, a black liberation and human rights organization established in 1972. In 1978, Debbie and Michael, along with seven other members of the organization, were convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to 30-100 years in prison for the death of a Philadelphia police officer after a violent confrontation between the two groups. The first of its kind about MOVE from the perspective of three of the group’s members, my book offers the unique perspective of a family that was literally birthed in prison but managed to survive 40 years of separation.

Along with my teaching, research, and ministry, I serve as the Associate Dean of Baccalaureate Studies for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.