Professor of Africana studies and history

First year teaching at Luther: 1985

First career: Served as a Baptist minister in his native Louisville, Kentucky, running an alternative high school program for students, including pregnant teens, not served by other area schools.

Around town: Usually walks to work with his trademark black satchel over his shoulder.

Sunday drive: Preaches at First Baptist Church in West Union, Iowa, which he attends with his wife, Queen.

It takes only a few minutes to understand that Lawrence is a storyteller. His own narrative is rich--from his childhood friendship with Rudolph and Cassius Clay and his high school days in a newly integrated school to his early years as the first black Baptist preacher hired to teach at Luther, a long way from his native Southern clime.

"Like most people, my story is mixed," he says by way of introduction. "Imagine--I had nappy blond hair as a kid."

As Luther fleshed out its Africana studies program, Lawrence helped define its curriculum. "At first, the question was, 'Who's going to teach it?'" There were no graduates of Africana studies or black history to fill out the newly minted academic department at Luther or elsewhere across the country.

But, he says, content was never lacking. "So much of what we call black culture originates in the church--gospel, for example. There's a history to be discovered, starting in other countries and continuing right through my own experience in junior high school in the 1950s--where we were encouraged to learn woodworking, metal working, and shoe repair--and on to today."

The story is messy in places, but it offers Luther students valuable perspective.

"I'm not a black nationalist; I take more an integration approach. I show different points of view and allow students to synthesize ideas," he says. His courses include "The Black Church," "Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement," "The Black Family," and "Slavery."

An avid writer, Lawrence authors articles about issues within the black church for an annual conference, most recently publishing "Influence of Black Church on Black Parenting in Currents in Theology and Mission."

He's also a historian and repeat visiting scholar at Simmons University in Louisville, where he first taught black history in the late 1960s. Revitalized by new facilities, the college persists in a neighborhood that sometimes rings with gunfire. The juxtaposition isn't lost on Lawrence.

"The way I see it, America is not a melting pot. I don't know what it is--maybe more like a mosaic."