Steven O’Neill
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ENTREPRENEUR
// by Emerald Alexis Ware
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teven O’Neill, who turns 33 in July, started working in restaurants when he was 15, but that has not been his only work pursuit. He studied accounting at Mississippi State University, starting in 2000 until the events of 9/11 happened during his sophomore year in 2001. After that tragedy, he left school and joined the U.S. Army in 2003 as a rifleman in Iraq. When his tour ended in 2006, O’Neill dabbled in real estate while continuing some restaurant work. Realizing that he was more successful at working in the food industry, he soon committed to it. O’Neill worked with chef Louis Bruno at Bruno’s Eclectic Cuisine from 2002 until he joined the Army. In 2008, he helped open The Bulldog’s Jackson location, where he worked for three years. Then, in 2011, O’Neill decided he wanted to open his own place: The Manship Wood Fired Kitchen, which
opened its doors in 2013. “It’s one of those surreal moments,” O’Neill says. “… It’s amazing to see everything you’ve poured your blood, sweat, and tears into for a year and a half to come to fruition.” The restaurant specializes in dishes from European countries that are along the Mediterranean belt. For some of its more authentic dishes, the restaurant imports products from Europe, but he and his business partner Alex Eaton work to get as many products as possible from local farmers. O’Neill, a Texas native, has lived in Jackson for 22 years and volunteers with the Greater Jackson Chamber’s Vision 2022 10-year plan (his father is Greater Jackson Chamber Partnership President & CEO Duane O’Neill) working to help make Jackson an even better city. “We’ve made a commitment to the city to try to better to make it a place where our children can grow up in,” O’Neill says.
Ebony Lumumba PROFESSOR
// by Alexandria Wilson
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ackson native Ebony Lumumba is using her passion for literature to develop a platform to educate those around her. As an assistant professor and head of the English department at Tougaloo College, Lumumba teaches both lower- and upper-level literature courses to students. She educates them on literary works that provide a variety of perspectives from people all over the world. “If I can use the instruction of literature to very tangibly and positively impact people’s lives, that would be my end goal,” she says. “I don’t know if I can call it an end goal because I don’t really want it to end.” Lumumba uses independent research as a way to further her own knowledge. She is an advanced doctoral student at the University of Mississippi; she has finished her coursework and is now doing independent
Work. Live. Play. Prosper.
research and writing her dissertation, “Disenfranchised Mothering in Texts of the Global South.” In it, Lumumba focuses primarily on the experiences of mothers in oppressed communities. “It encompasses this trifecta of the American South, South Africa—or Southern African because I include Botswana as well— and then South Asia,” she says. Lumumba, 32, says that readers, especially students, should be exposed to stories of the unheard and those habitually excluded from common history books. “What troubles me most are really singular narratives,” she says. “Whereas, often times, curriculum calls on us to teach a very one-sided narrative of any place of history.” Lumumba married Chokwe Antar Lumumba, son of late Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, in 2013. The couple had their first child last year, Alaké Maryama. 53