Melodie R Jackson

Melodie Jackson received her BA from Brigham Young University majoring in American Studies, minoring in Sociology, and receiving an American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Portuguese language certificate. She worked as a Political Associate for the Michael Bennet presidential campaign where she headed both grassroot and grasstop organizing and research in socially connecting the candidate to the community. She considers herself an activist and uses creative writing and her faith to shape and center her activism. She founded the Provo, Utah “Let Freedom Read” Black Book Festival that seeks to explore and secure black liberation though various literacy forms in one of the least diverse cities in America. She also founded the #blacklivesmattertoChrist social media campaign to address and rectify racism within Latter Day Saints (LDS) communities and institutions. Her research interests include black studies, black religious studies including black liberation theology, treating and reading black bodies as material culture and texts, gender studies, and Afro-Brasilian bodies within an LDS/Mormon religious, cultural, and social context.