The UB Interview: Dr. Margena A. Christian Talks ‘Sylvia Moy’ Biography

Dr. Margena A. Christian, spent 30 years as an editor at EBONY and JET.

Who recently published her first biography, of Sylvia Moy, “It’s No Wonder: The Life and Times of Motown’s Legendary Songwriter Sylvia Moy.”

Moy was Motown‘s first female in-house songwriter and producer, usually the only woman in the room.

When the label was about to drop a teenage Stevie Wonder, she’s the one who turned things around. She wrote songs like “My Cherie Amour” and “Uptight.”

Dr. Margena A. Christian worked with Moy‘s estate to tell her story.

A month before Margena finished the manuscript, she was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer.

It was a hard road, but she says finishing Moy‘s story gave her even more fight.

Margena A. Christian, Ed.D., is an Emeritus Senior Lecturer and Director of Internships for Undergraduate Studies, English and Professional Writing, at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her research interests focus on the intersections of the role of the media in education, Black popular culture, biographical and historical inquiry.

The media scholar and journalist is a former Senior Editor/Senior Writer with the monthly EBONY magazine and a former features editor with the weekly JET magazine.

She is the only editor in the history of Johnson Publishing Company (JPC) to have written for EBONY, JET, EBONY Man, EBONY South Africa, EBONY Fashion Fair and EBONY.com. Her tenure was the following: (JET 1995-2009) (EBONY 2009-2014).

Dr. Christian also compiled the history for EBONY Fashion Fair, JPC‘s pioneering traveling fashion show, and was the last editor at JPC to have worked with late publishing magnate John H. Johnson, founder of JPC, before leaving the company in 2014.

Additionally, commissioned articles written by Dr. Christian about John H. Johnson, Eunice W. Johnson, Lerone Bennett Jr., Bo Diddley, Tupac Shakur, Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace, Donna Summer, Aaliyah, Luther Vandross, Ossie Davis, and Della Reese are featured online at Oxford University Press’ American National Biography.

The St. Louis native is the author of two biographies, Empire: The House That John H. Johnson Built (2018) and It’s No Wonder: The Life and Times of Motown’s Legendary Songwriter Sylvia Moy (2026). She also co-authored Wallace Safford’s memoir, Wally, Where’d You Get Those Glasses: My Life Through the Lens of Parliament, Pendergrass and Prince (2019).

Aries from UB recently spoke to Dr. Margena A. Christian about her new biography.

She shares with us the role Sylvia Moy played at Motown Records.

Dr. Margena A. Christian also gets candid about AI, and shares how cheaters, liars, and thieves will continue to benefit the most from it.

Plus she speaks on her Cancer battle and more!

UrbanBridgez.com: How are you doing today?
Dr. Margena A. Christian: I am doing well. Thank you so much for having me. I love your name. My mom was an Aries. I don’t know if your name was inspired by an astrological sign of any sort.

UrbanBridgez.com: Yeah, definitely. April 6th.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Okay, okay. I love that.

UrbanBridgez.com: Let’s start by you telling us about your biography. Pretty much my question is what made you decide to do it now?
Dr. Margena A. Christian: I decided timing is everything. When you are publishing, you really don’t know when it’s going to come out because there are so many moving pieces. I actually did three years worth of research. After four years, putting it together and all of the things that you go through with trying to get it out, the time it just worked out where it came out this year. I say it’s divine order because once again, you never know how it’s going to come out.

The timing of me reaching back to learn about her was in 2021 during the pandemic. I had all the time in the world as did most people because we were sitting at home and glued to social media, but I do believe in divine order and that everything happens for a reason and so what better time than now?

UrbanBridgez.com: It’s all the way it’s meant to be. I definitely agree with that. What’s something that you want people to take away from your story once they read it?
Dr. Margena A. Christian: I want people to take away that there are people in this world who are or were destined to be great, but none of us make it to where we do without having somebody else there to help us along the way. Along the way of Stevie Wonder’s path was a woman by the name of Sylvia Moy who helped to mentor him, helped to shape him and was his early lyricist. I want people to know that this woman opened doors not just for women of color, but for all women in the male-dominated music industry as a songwriter and as a producer during the 60s when it was very rare for women to be a multi-hyphenate and I might add she also played the piano, she played the guitar and she also played the drums and she was also an artist. She could draw as well.

UrbanBridgez.com: Wow. Yeah, let’s get into it. Let’s talk Motown.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Yes, yes, yes.

UrbanBridgez.com: Tell us about the role Sylvia Moy actually played at the Iconic Label.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: The role she played was that she came into the label in 1964. She was recruited by William Mickey Stevenson who was the head of A&R and also Marvin Gaye. They went to the Caucus Club and saw her perform and Mickey Stevenson suggested she come in and audition and so she did and they were impressed by her voice, but they were more impressed by the two songs she performed because she had written the lyrics and at the time in 1964, Motown was becoming the machine and so they had so many artists and they needed more people to write so they suggested that, hey, we’ll get back to you as a singer, but we’d like you to come aboard as a songwriter.

Now what made this different was that she became the first female in-house songwriter. That meant she, that’s all she did. There were other women before her who were songwriters, namely Jamie Bradford, who just passed away last month. She was the first female songwriter at Motown and then the first female producer was Raynoma Gordy Singleton who was Barry Gordy’s second wife but Sylvia made history in that she was the first multi-hyphenate to do it full time and she was working alongside the men. So Motown was the machine. It was Hitsville and that’s what made Sylvia Moy stand out and also she was willing to step up and save the career of a kid at the label and that was Little Stevie Wonder.

But before that, Sylvia was like uh-uh, this is not my first rodeo. I’ve proven myself and wrote hits for others. Prior to her working with Stevie Wonder, Sylvia wrote a hit song for Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston called It Takes Two. She also helped to co-write the song with Eddie Holland. The song was called This Old Heart of Mine by the Isley Brothers and she had also written songs with Martha Reeves.

So Sylvia had proven herself as a hit maker before she even touched Stevie Wonder. Yeah, that was my question too. That’s about being just like a woman back then and being a songwriter and being just involved in music like that.

UrbanBridgez.com: That had to be like very hard to do that.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: It was difficult because in the 60s, you know, women were stay in the kitchen, stay at home, and stay quiet. And if you’re going to be in the studio, you’re going to be a singer. You’re not going to be a songwriter and you really will not be a producer. Sylvia Lloyd defined the odds with all of that. And as I mentioned, she also played instruments. So this woman was a triple threat all the way around. She could do all of these things. And a female playing drums and guitar wasn’t something very common.

And then this woman, it was not just a Motown concern or issue. It was a music industry concern and issue. Those in the background didn’t always get credit. And when you were a female, you really didn’t get credit. So it was a double edged sword for her. You know, being a female, being in the background, and then I might add the race compounded. However, in Motown, everybody looked the way she did. So it was an industry thing that was happening with women. That she was able to break that ceiling and penetrate it for, like I said, not just women of color, but for all women.

UrbanBridgez.com: Exactly. I love that.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: And being that the industry has come from the 60s and the 70s, the soul, the Motown, the 80s, 90s hip-hop, and just on to neo-soul. And now we’re at a space where it’s like AI. And it’s like, is it really people? Is it really that?

UrbanBridgez.com: What is your opinion on that, being that someone that definitely has a mark in this industry as far as AI and charting and things of that nature?
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Well, I believe that AI is making it easy for people. There were cheaters, liars, and thieves back then, but AI is just going to make it a little bit easier for some of these people.

UrbanBridgez.com: I like me. I love it.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: It’s also going to make people lazier or more lazy because it’s going to be very tempting for people to say, oh, I have the music put together. Now I need some lyrics. Or vice versa. And so AI is not the enemy here. It’s a matter of how you use it. And we have to understand if you can’t beat them, join them.

But you got to figure out how to use it in a way where it’s not going to be to your detriment. Because AI is going to put people in a category of learned helplessness, where you’re going to get so used to doing stuff. Like with hip-hop, the days of folks using drums, now they use drum machines and they have keyboards that can do a full arrangement for you. Whereas back in the day, folks actually came in and put in the work. So the same is happening with AI. And it’s just going to keep growing and growing.

But you can use it to work with you, not to use it, like I said, to your detriment. Because it’s going to make people lazier. It’s going to tempt more people to be liars, thieves, and cheats, which they already are in the music industry as it is. It’s just going to become more common.

UrbanBridgez.com: I definitely agree with you.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Yes. As Daryl Hall of Hall of Notes once said, the music industry does two things. It exploits and it also steals. So those are two things that happen. And it’s not just with women. It’s with men, and it’s with all people in all sectors of music. It’s about exploitation and thievery, as he called it. Now, you take that for what it’s worth. And imagine in the 60s and being a woman and what you were up against.

UrbanBridgez.com: That’s crazy. Wow. But switching gears real quick, you’ve got to tell us about your experience with Ebony and Jet.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Oh, goodness. You know, I was with Ebony and Jet during his heyday when we had legacy magazines where you could actually hold them in your hand. And the golden glorious days of Jet magazine, the golden glorious days of Ebony magazine. I was just thinking about that the other day. Social media, I usually do my throwback Thursday pictures or whatever. I have a picture of one of the last, and I say it with my whole chest, one of the last great Ebony editorial teams.

And we were putting in the elbow grease in the work when it was Johnson Publishing Company because it has many owners, but I was there under the man himself, John H. Johnson. I was there. Many of the things that you read about, I was instrumental in helping when people got married. You could see the wedding pictures. When there were people in the music industry, you wonder what is such and such? I did the where are they now? And then we had the Top 40 records chart. We don’t have record charts, because we don’t have records anymore.

So the good old days, and here’s the thing, looking back doesn’t mean that you should hinder yourself from going forward. I just look back at the beauty of what once was, and I am so proud to say that I was a soldier in the army of Ebony Jet Magazine, Johnson Publishing from 1995 until 2014. And I have still, even when I left Johnson and Ebony and Jet, they reached out to me and I’ve written freelance articles for them. And so that’s to say that you have left and you didn’t burn a bridge because there were a lot of bridges burned by many people and I’m thankful I wasn’t one of them. But I look at what once was and I say I didn’t just sit on the sidelines while history was being made. I was in the trenches helping it be written. And for that I’m proud of and I’m so thankful.

UrbanBridgez.com: Definitely. I love that. You definitely were.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Now you sound kind of young. Did you remember the magazines?

UrbanBridgez.com: Yeah. I grew up on those. My mom, my aunts, everybody had them all. So yeah, definitely. Then when I was older, I was getting my subscriptions.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Now, are you old enough to remember the Ebony Fashion Show?

UrbanBridgez.com: Yeah, because they used to have it and you guys used to always put it in one of the issues like every year.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Yeah. It was in the issue every year and also if you went to the show, you could get either a subscription, a year subscription to Ebony or you could get six months of Jet for free. So you were getting something out the deal. In addition to the experience, you were getting a subscription and they had a raffle where you might have won something and the best part was that the money was going towards the HBCUs. So it was going to contribute. So all around it was black excellence and its finest.

UrbanBridgez.com: Definitely. Oh, I miss those days.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Oh, I do too. I miss them.

UrbanBridgez.com: And then before we wrap, I wanted to know if you could share a little bit about your cancer battle and how are you doing today?
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Thank you for asking. Last week, I went to the doctor. I’m still NED, which is no evidence of disease. So I am doing well and I’m very thankful. But I was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer in June of last year. I was concerned about my health, but also I knew I had a book that was being written and you talked about timing. The book was going to be coming out the year after the diagnosis and so I’m thinking, you know, I want to be here to tell the story literally, you know, figuratively. And God saw fit, but also I felt the hand of somebody else by my side.

I had an epiphany and it was that Sylvia Moy, I am giving you life through this book and I felt like she was returning the favor and I believe that and I know that because every step of the way, no matter what obstacles might have come my way, those obstacles never prevented anything from happening. Her story continues to grow. More people are knowing about it and I just feel blessed to be the vessel that she chose to be able to share her story because this woman was very quiet and so it wasn’t easy finding information about her because she was one of those people who was hidden in history, but also she was quiet.

But when it came time for us to write the story, she got busy and the spirit was flowing, baby. The spirit was flowing. I already know that.

UrbanBridgez.com: I can’t wait to read the book. What’s next for you?
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Well, I have my eyes set on a subject for a book that I’d like to work on next and I don’t want to put it out in the universe, but we’ll see. I’m moving in a positive direction with that and we’ll see where that leads me but right now I’m still just moving and grooving with Sylvia Moy’s story and it’s no wonder and how this woman did so many wonderful and amazing things that the world is starting to find out about and talking about timing, Stevie Wonder’s on this tour that he’ll be doing and I smile knowing that he’s known as one of the greatest lyricists, but a woman helped him to get to where he did and that’s what a lot of people need to know and understand.

UrbanBridgez.com: Yeah, I love it. I definitely want to see that show.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Oh yes, yes, yes.

UrbanBridgez.com: Is there anything else?
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Give him a good shout out in the article. You know, we got to do a highlight Stevie in this.

UrbanBridgez.com: Right. Anything else you want to share before we wrap up?
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Just thank you so much for sharing this story and I want people to know that there were many people who made Motown what it was and one of those people happened to have been a woman and she was one of the architects of the Motown sound and that was Sylvia Boyd.

UrbanBridgez.com: I’m going to read your book so I can’t wait to check it out and I look forward to what you do next.
Dr. Margena A. Christian: Thank you so very much. It’s a pleasure and thank you for taking an interest in it.