Gullah Spirit by Jonathan Green

Author:Jonathan Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Servant Leader

In his 1970 essay The Servant as Leader, Robert Greenleaf defined servant leaders as confirmatory builders of a better society. He saw the underpinning on which a good society is built as people caring for and serving one another. Greenleaf wrote that everything begins with the initiative of the individual. Jonathan exemplifies the key characteristics of a servant leader as identified by Greenleaf: the ability to integrate intuition and logic, the capacity to communicate a vision to others, and the courage to go out ahead even when the path is uncertain.

Jonathan’s support of community activities and organizations brings forth the voice and example of an exceptional African American servant leader, who is “very right for the time and place” in which he lives—a synchronicity Greenleaf identified as critical to great leadership. The publication of Jonathan Green’s yearly calendars is a perfect example of his commitment to community, given that proceeds from the calendars have benefitted a multitude of community organizations.

Whereas Jonathan has enjoyed appreciable commercial success due to the wide acceptance and collection of his art, he has never forgotten from whence he came or his instilled system of values. His munificence with the use of his images by community organizations for fundraising and public relations endeavors geared toward the uplifting and edification of their respective philanthropies exemplifies his spirit of giving. His work has been used as inspiration and support for education, the arts, healthcare, and reading programs, among others. Green’s art is represented in some of the finest museums and collections in the world, and yet he continues to share his images with the masses by way of book covers, calendars, notecards, and posters whose proceeds fund missions of communities in need.

His founding of the Lowcountry Rice Culture Project further solidifies his role as a servant leader. This organization has a mission to discover and revive the significance of rice cultivation and its legacies, and to use this history as a launching-off point for broad discussions, activities, and events that center around race, class, art, trade, history, and economics—in short, the various aspects of culture that originated on the rice plantations in the Lowcountry with long-lasting influence on life in the Lowcountry and throughout the Southeast.

A servant leader is servant first and understands his responsibility as a citizen to contribute to the well-being of people and community. A servant leader looks to the needs of the people and strives to help them solve problems and harken personal development. A servant-leader requires a spiritual understanding of identity, mission, vision, and environment. Jonathan Green is truly a servant leader.

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