Fifteen years ago, during summer break from Mississippi State University, Melvin J. Collier, a young Canton, Mississippi native, walked through the doors of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson, anxious to dig up his family roots.  Little did he know that the journey he was about to embark would take him all over the South and even back to Africa.  Collier has spent innumerable days researching and documenting the history of his family.  He credits his "curiosity bug" to his paternal grandmother, the late Mrs. Willie Ealy Collier, with whom he had a very close relationship and who often shared with him stories about her Lena, Mississippi roots.  His passion for history, writing, and researching led to his major career change from working in Corporate America in Memphis, Tennessee as a civil engineer to obtaining a Master of Arts degree in African-American Studies from Clark Atlanta University, with his eyes on furthering his education in History and Archival Management.  After relocating to Atlanta, Collier was selected to work with the Morehouse College Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Collection archival processing team who is currently archiving and getting the extensive King collection ready for public, scholarly research.  He has given numerous presentations and workshops on genealogy, slave ancestral research, and family reunion planning.  Mississippi to Africa is his first book.

Mississippi to Africa
Mississippi to Africa captures Collier's 14-year journey in excavating the buried history of his maternal grandmother's family -- a journey that took him back seven generations, from northern Mississippi to the Piedmont hills of South Carolina, and even back to a specific people and region in West Africa where his ancestry undoubtedly began.