On Feb. 5 and 6, Dr. Sandy D. Martin, professor of history of Christianity, American and African American religious history at the University of Georgia, will be the featured speaker during the seminary’s annual Bishop Alfred E. and Mamie Williams White Endowed Heritage Lecture Series.

The first lecture, at 12:20 p.m. on Feb. 5 in the chapel, is titled “The Religious Impact and Significance of Emancipation and Reconstruction for African American Christianity: With Particular Focus on James Walker Hood and the A.M.E. Zion Church.”

The second lecture, “The Enduring Religious and Political Legacy of Bishop James Walker Hood,” will be at 7 p.m. on Feb. 6 in room 315.

The lectures are free and open to the public.

“Dr. Martin is highly regarded as an outstanding scholar and educator within institutions of higher learning throughout the country. We are proud and fortunate to have such a distinguished speaker for the Bishop White Endowed Heritage Lecture Series,” said seminary Dr. Vergel Lattimore.

Martin received a doctorate degree in philosophy in religion and a master’s degree in philosophy and a master of arts in religion from Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in New York. He received a bachelor of arts in philosophy and religion; and political science from Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Mississippi.

Martin is published and has lectured at colleges, universities and theological seminaries throughout the United States. Among his many publications is his book “For God and Race: The Religious and Political Leadership of AMEZ Bishop James Walker Hood.”

The Heritage Lecture Series, established in 1999, was endowed in April 2012 by an estate gift of Mamie Williams White, wife of Hood Seminary alumnus the late Bishop Alfred Edward White, who served as a presiding prelate of the AME Zion Church from 1984 until 1992. The endowment is a memorial tribute for the devout and dedicated ministry of Bishop White who believed firmly in the training of clergy and will be remembered as one of God’s great servants of the church.

Hood Theological Seminary is located at 1810 Lutheran Synod Drive in Salisbury. For more information, call the Development Office at 704-636-6926 or email cpalmer@hoodseminary.edu.