Author Owner Publisher

About the author…
 

Dr. Sam Lemon grew up in Media, Pennsylvania, where his maternal great-great grandparents arrived as runaway slaves during the Civil War. Given refuge and support by local Quakers, his ancestors prospered and became prominent members of the community. Their descendants have lived on Olive Street in Media since 1872. He is currently an assistant professor and the director of a graduate program at Neumann University in Pennsylvania, and formerly worked in the fields of social services, education, and public television at WHYY in Philadelphia.

 

Dr. Lemon earned a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia; a Master’s in Instructional Media at West Chester University, and a Doctorate in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation was The Construction of Ethnoracial Identity within Situational Contexts © 2007 (UPenn/UMI). His first novel, Go Stand Upon the Rock (2012) is based on his family’s strong oral and cultural traditions.

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His second book, The Case That Shocked the Country: The Unquiet deaths of Vida Robare and Alexander McClay Williams -- the youngest person in Pennsylvania to die in the electric chair -- for a crime he did not commit (2017), is the true story of a 16 year old African American teenager at Glen Mills School in Delaware County who was convicted in 1931 of a murder he did not commit, and was the youngest person executed by the state of Pennsylvania. It is based on over 30 years of meticulous and painstaking research.

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Dr. Lemon writes on a variety of topics including race, ethnicity, culture, science, animal intelligence, and current events. He is a Quaker, and a member of: the Brandywine Valley Writers Group, the Caribbean Genealogy Library, the League of Women Voters, and the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.  He is also working on the sequel to Go Stand Upon the Rock, part of which focuses on an ancestor who fought with the legendary “Harlem Hellfighters” in World War I in France; and who, along with the rest of the 369th Infantry Regiment, was awarded France’s highest military honor – the Croix de Guerre.