HISTORIANS ON HOPE
James Baldwin once said, "history is literally present in everything we do" while John Henrik Clarke once said, "history is not everything, but it is a starting point." These quotes remind us to use "history as a starting point" to inspire and inform our community, even during unprecedented times.
Each week, NAAM features words of hope from notable African American historians in our #HistoriansOnHope virtual series. We invite you to share these graphics on your favorite social media platforms. Be sure to tag us at @naamnw!
Gloria Browne-Marshall, J.D./M.A.
Gloria Browne-Marshall is a full Professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College (CUNY), author of many books including Race, Law, and American Society: 1607 to Present (Routledge), The Voting Rights War (Rowman & Littlefield) and the forthcoming book She Took Justice. She is a legal historian, civil rights attorney, U.S. Supreme Court Correspondent, a playwright, award-winning writer, voting rights consultant to WHYY (Philadelphia PBS/NPR affiliate), and a member of the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). She is national chair of ASALH's 400th Commemoration Committee.
Karsonya Wise Whitehead, Ph.D.
Karsonya "Kaye" Wise Whitehead is an American educator, author, radio host, speaker, and documentary filmmaker who is known as the #BlackMommyActivist. She is Associate Professor of Communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland. She is the host of “Today with Dr. Kaye” on radio station WEAA, which received the 2019 Associated Press Award for Outstanding Talk and the second place Award for Outstanding Editorial and Commentary. Whitehead is an Opinion Editorial columnist for the Baltimore Afro-American. She also serves as secretary on the National Executive Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).
Dr. Quintard Taylor
Dr. Quintard Taylor is the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History, Emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Dr. Taylor is a historian of the global Black experience with over 47 years of experience in higher education. His career began in 1971 when he was hired as an Assistant Professor in the Black Studies Program at Washington State University. Dr Taylor became a UW Bullitt Professor in 2018 and has won numerous awards for teaching. He is founder and director of www.BlackPast.org, a web-based reference center for African American history.
Randal Jelks, Ph.D.
Dr. Randal Maurice Jelks is Professor of African & African American Studies and American Studies at the University of Kansas. He is co-editor of the Journal of American Studies. Dr. Jelks is the author of the award winning books - African Americans in the Furniture City: The Struggle for Civil Rights Struggle in Grand Rapids (2006) and Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement: A Biography (2012). His latest book is entitled Faith and Struggle in the Lives of Four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver and Muhammad Ali (2019). In addition, he serves as an executive producer of a biographical documentary "I, Too, Sing America: Langston Hughes Unfurled". Dr. Jelks is a member of the national Executive Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life and HIstory (ASALH)
Brenda Tindal
"The stultifying reality of the COVID-19 pandemic brings the labyrinth of race, poverty, health disparities, and more into sharp focus," notes public historian Brenda Tindal.
Tindal is an awarding-winning educator, scholar and museum practitioner. As Director of Education & Engagement at the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, Tindal provides organizational leadership in the areas of K-16 educational initiatives, content and curriculum development, public programming, strategic partnerships, and the overarching museum visitor experience.
Tindal is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a 2011 Institute of Museum and Library Service (IMLS) at Princeton University. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of African American Museums (AAAM).
Ashley Jordan, Ph.D.
Dr. Ashley Jordan is Executive Director of the Evansville African American Museum in Evansville, Indiana. Prior, she was Curator at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio.
Dr. Jordan is recipient of numerous professional, academic and civic awards including the Pace Setter Award from the Association of African American Museums, a multiple doctoral fellowship recipient for the Filson and the Kentucky Historical Societies, and the Black Excellence Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, (NAACP).
She is an active member of the American Association for State and Local History, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the American Alliance of Museums, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of African American Museums. She received her Ph.D. from Howard University and is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Noelle N. Trent, Ph.D.
Dr. Noelle N. Trent is the Director of Interpretation, Collections & Education at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. She earned a Masters in Public History, and a Ph.D. in United States History from Howard University in Washington, DC. Dr. Trent is an accomplished public historian and has worked with several noted organizations and projects including the National Park Service, the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, where she contributed to the exhibition Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom: The Era of Segregation 1876 - 1968.
She has been a contributor to the African American Intellectual History Society’s blog, and was featured in “Breaking Free: An Underground Special” for the WGN America drama Underground. Dr. Trent has traveled internationally, presenting lectures at the European Solidarity Center in Gdansk, Poland and in Sopot, Poland as part of the 2017 Memphis in Poland Festival.
She has recently curated an exhibition and planned the commemorative service as a part of the National Civil Rights Museum’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, MLK50.
Samuel W. Black
Samuel W. Black is Director of the African American Program at the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is former President of the Association of African American Museums (2011-2016) and served on the Executive Council and the Advisory Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life & History (ASALH) as well as the program committee of the American Alliance of Museums.
He has received numerous awards, including a 2019 Fulbright Germany Transatlantic Seminar Curator of the Smithsonian Institution and Leibniz Association of Germany. Black has curated a number of award-winning exhibitions, including “Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era”. He has authored a number of essays, book reviews, and narratives and serves as an editor on a number of history publications.
His current book project centers on the means to which freedom seekers (runaway slaves) survived the journey to freedom. He is a museum consultant advising his clients across the country on administrative, collection, fund-development, and programmatic stewardship.
Evenlyn Brooks Higginbotham, Ph.D.
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is the first African American to chair Harvard’s History Department. Higginbotham also serves as the current National President of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. This organization was founded by Carter G. Woodson in 1915.
Prior to Harvard, she taught on the faculties of Dartmouth College, the University of Maryland, and the University of Pennsylvania. At the special invitation of Duke University, she taught at the Duke Law School in 2010-2011 as the inaugural John Hope Franklin Professor of American Legal History.
A pioneering scholar in African American women’s history, Higginbotham is the author of the prizewinning book “Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church 1880-1920.” She is also co-editor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of the “African American National Biography”, now in its second edition (2013). This twelve-volume resource presents African American history through the lives of more than 5,000 biographical entries.
Higginbotham is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. Most notably she received the 2014 National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama at the White House for “illuminating the African American journey.” In 2015 she was named one of the “Top 25 Women in Higher Education” by Diverse Magazine.
Charles Ezra Ferrell
Charles Ezra Ferrell is Vice President of Public Programs & Community Engagement at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan. His extensive programming portfolio has received international acclaim for its quality and cultural relevance. He is recipient of the 2019 Champion of the Year Award from Michigan Humanities and the 2019 Culture Bearer Award from the Societie of the Culturally Concerned.
His publications include: “A Tribute to General Baker” (The Black Scholar - Online, 2014), "Free the Land! Reflections in Honor of the Significant Life, Contributions, Battles and Victories of Revolutionary Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, Esq." (Liberation Press, 2015), and “Malcolm X’s Pre-Nation of Islam (NOI) Discourses” in Malcolm X’s Worldview (Michigan State University Press, 2015), “A Tribute to General Baker” (The Black Scholar - Online, 2014) and “Baker, General Gordon, Jr. (1941-2014)” (Black Power Encyclopedia: From “Black Is Beautiful” to Urban Uprisings, ABC-CLIO, 2018).
Talitha L. LeFlouria, Ph.D.
Dr. Talitha LeFlouria is the Lisa Smith Discovery Associate Professor of African and African-American Studies in the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia. She is a nationally recognized historian and a leading expert on black women and mass incarceration.
Professor LeFlouria is the author of the multi-award-winning 'Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South' (University of North Carolina Press, 2015), the first history of black, working-class incarcerated women in the post-Civil War period. This book received six prizes from The Organization of American Historians, the Association of Black Women Historians, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Georgia Historical Society, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and the Labor and Working-Class History Association. She is currently finishing her second single-authored monograph, 'The Search for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America' (forthcoming from Beacon Press). The Carnegie Corporation supported this project with a prestigious Andrew Carnegie fellowship 2018-2020.
In addition to her scholarly publications, Professor LeFlouria writes for popular media outlets, including The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Root. Her scholarship has been featured in Ms. Magazine, Huffington Post, The Nation, For Harriet, and ColorBlind Magazine. She has also made on-camera appearances on C-SPAN (American History TV) and in several PBS documentaries including Slavery by Another Name.