Micheal J. Darby holds a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology and a Master of Arts in religious education. He also earned a master’s degree in divinity. He worked in the public school system, served as a pastor, was an education instructor at a Christian seminary, and is a United States Army Veteran. Darby is married and has three adult children.
Darby grew up in the 50s in the 60s, the most historic period of the American experience. During the summer of 1955, he was standing in his front yard when a person showed him the battered body of Emmett Till in a Jet Magazine.
Growing up as a boy, he saw colored and white signs posted over drinking fountains in the doors of restrooms. He sat in the car waiting for his stepfather when he went to the back entrance of a restaurant to receive food in a brown paper bag.
In August of 1963, he cried while standing in his driveway when he heard the buses leaving from a local church to go to the March on Washington to hear Doctor King give his I have a dream speech. His heart burned when he sat looking at the TV, watching the fire hoses blasted at children during the Birmingham March in 1963.
The John F Kennedy assassination placed fear in his heart when he attended junior high school. On the day of the assassination of Doctor King, he walked home from an after-school job and reflected on what doctor king had done for America.
He had a sense of fear during nuclear threats between the United States and Russia. Nevertheless, he attended high school and college, knowing service in the Vietnam War was waiting for him.
He grew up in a household with his grandfather, the son of an enslaved person, who taught him his first history lessons on the racial state of America. Darby speaks from experience, not from what he reads in books. He grew up in a Christian environment and is passionate about passing on his Christian education and race-relation wisdom to future generations.