Rev. Dr. Sheldon R. Shipman is a motivational speaker, community activist, Afrocentric educator, senior minister, and pastor for the past forty years. He is currently in his nineteenth year as the pastor of the Greenville Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (Charlotte, NC), the denomination known as the “Freedom Church” — the church of Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Paul Robeson, Booker T. Washington, and Harriet Tubman.
Dr. Shipman is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte (1976), received his Master of Divinity degree from Hood Theological Seminary, Livingstone College (1980, Salisbury, N.C.), and completed his doctoral work at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University (Richmond, V.A.) in 2002. His professional and community services are numerous and include boards and organizations such as the Urban League, United Way, NAACP, UNCC, Hood Theological Seminary, and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.
He is the son of the late Dr. F. George Shipman and Louise McKoy Shipman, former president and first lady of Livingstone College (1969-1982). He is married to the former Teresa L. McNair, retired executive director for licensure and personnel staffing for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, and they are the blessed parents of adult twins, Joshua McKoy and Jamiel Baker Shipman, and an energetic college student, Joy Scott Shipman.