Rev. Sadie A. Woolford

Rev. Sadie A. Woolford is a writer, minister, and pastoral counselor and is associate pastor at St. John the Evangelist Baptist Church of Columbia, Maryland, which she cofounded in 1971. She is also a film and immersive-media producer and is the executive producer of the multi-award-winning 2018 experimental short Generation, based on her life growing up in the rural American South in the 1930s and ‘40s, and associate producer of the 2020 critically acclaimed short Interrupted: Prologue to a Mem-Noir about the history of anti-Blackness in America.

Rev. Woolford is a recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Creativity Grant for her upcoming documentary short about a Black centenarian. She has been honored with a featured interview on her in the “Our Giving, Our Stories” Women’s Giving Circle of Howard County series. She has also been a winner of America’s Grandest Moments essay contest sponsored by Mature Outlook magazine.

Excerpts from Rev. Woolfords’ memoir-in-progress From Farm Girl to Pastoral Counselor have been anthologized, most recently in The Fire Inside: Collected Stories and Poems from Zora’s Den edited by Victoria Kennedy with a foreword by Lucy Anne Hurston, Zora Neale Hurston’s biographer and niece.

For nearly 10 years, Rev. Woolford has been a member of the Board of the Howard County Foundation for Black Educational and Cultural Achievement, where she serves as chaplain. She was also a founding member of the nonprofit board of Howard County Lynching Truth and Reconciliation​​​​​​​.​​​​​​​