WElizabeth Alexander is an American poet, essayist, playwright, and the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2018. Previously she was a professor for 15 years at Yale University, where she taught poetry and chaired the African American Studies department. She then joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2016, as the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature.
WAntonio D. Tillis is an American academic administrator currently serving as the chancellor of Rutgers University–Camden. He assumed office on July 1, 2021.
WKwame Akroma-Ampim Kusi Anthony Appiah is a British-Ghanaian philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist whose interests include political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual history. Appiah was the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, before moving to New York University (NYU) in 2014. He holds an appointment at the NYU Department of Philosophy and NYU's School of Law.
WMolefi Kete Asante is an American professor and philosopher. He is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies, and communication studies. He is currently professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University, where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies. He is president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies.
WJabari Asim is an author, poet, playwright, and associate professor of writing, literature and publishing at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. He's the former Editor-in-Chief of The Crisis magazine, a journal of politics, ideas and culture published by the NAACP and founded by historian and social activist W. E. B. Du Bois in 1910. In February 2019 he was named Emerson College's inaugural Elma Lewis ’43 Distinguished Fellow in the Social Justice Center.
WRuha Benjamin is a sociologist and a Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. The primary focus of her work is the relationship between innovation and equity, particularly focusing on the intersection of race, justice and technology. Benjamin is the author of numerous publications, including the books People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (2013) and Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019).
WDaphne Brooks is William R. Kenan, Jr. professor of African American studies, American Studies, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Music at Yale University; she is also director of graduate studies. She specializes in African American literary cultural performance studies, especially 19th century and trans-Atlantic culture. She is a rock music lover and has attributed her research interests in black performance to being a fan of rock music since a very young age.
WWilliam Shadrack Cole is an American jazz musician, ethnomusicologist, professor of music, professor of African-American studies, and author. As All About Jazz jazz journalist Dan McClenaghan put it, "Cole – a rare breed of jazz artist who has focused his efforts on uniting Eastern sounds with the American art form – is a musical seeker who has, over the better part of four decades [since 1974], mastered an array of non-traditional, non-Western [wind] instruments." Cole specializes in the Ghanaian atenteben, the Chinese suona, the Korean hojok and piri, the South Indian nagaswaram, the North Indian shehnai, the Tibetan trumpet, and the Australian didjeridu. Cole has a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University. Cole has written two books, one on Miles Davis and one on John Coltrane. Cole is the founder and leader of the Untempered Ensemble.
WPatricia Hill Collins is an American academic specializing in race, class, and gender. She is a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the former head of the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Cincinnati, and a past President of the American Sociological Association. Collins was the 100th president of the ASA and the first African-American woman to hold this position.
WWilliam A. Darity Jr. is an American economist and researcher. Darity's research spans economic history, development economics, and monetary theory, but the bulk of his research is devoted to inequality in the context of race. In particular, for his 2005 paper in the Journal of Economics and Finance, Darity is known as the 'founder of stratification economics.' His varied research interests have also included the African diaspora, the economics of black reparations, group-based post traumatic stress disorder, and social and economic policy as they relate to race and ethnicity.
WAngela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and is a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She is the author of over ten books on class, feminism, race, and the US prison system.
WWilliam Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community, and after completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.
WGerald Lyn Early is an American essayist and American culture critic. He is currently the Merle Kling Professor of Modern letters, of English, African studies, African-American studies, American culture studies, and Director, Center for Joint Projects in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
WRamona Hoage Edelin is an American academic, activist and consultant. Edelin is credited with introducing the term "African American" into the general vernacular. She has been named one of the most influential Black Americans by Ebony. Today, she serves as executive director of the DC Association of Charter Schools.
WBrent Hayes Edwards is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University.
WJohn Hope Franklin was an American historian of the United States and former president of Phi Beta Kappa, the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Southern Historical Association. Franklin is best known for his work From Slavery to Freedom, first published in 1947, and continually updated. More than three million copies have been sold. In 1995, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
WHenry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is an American literary critic, professor, historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is a Trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels, long forgotten, and has published extensively on appreciating African-American literature as part of the Western canon.
WEddie S. Glaude Jr. is an American academic. He is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where he is also the Chair of the Center for African American Studies and the Chair of the Department of African American Studies. He is the author of the 2020 book Begin Again, which is about James Baldwin and the history of American politics.
WEmily Greenwood is professor of Classics and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. She was formerly John M. Musser Professor of Classics and Chair of the Department of Classics at Yale University. Her research focuses on Ancient Greek historiography, particularly Thucydides and Herodotus, the development of History as a genre and a modern critical discipline, and local and transnational black traditions of interpreting Greek and Roman classics. Her work explores the appropriation and reinvention of Greco-Roman classical antiquity from the late nineteenth century to the present.
WVincent Gordon Harding (1931–2014) was an African-American historian and a scholar of various topics with a focus on American religion and society. A social activist, he was perhaps best known for his work with and writings about Martin Luther King Jr., whom Harding knew personally. Besides having authored numerous books such as There Is A River, Hope and History, and Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero, he served as co-chairperson of the social unity group Veterans of Hope Project and as Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. When Harding died on May 19, 2014, his daughter, Rachel Elizabeth Harding, publicly eulogized him on the Veterans of Hope Project website.
WNathan Hare is an American sociologist, activist, academic, and psychologist. In 1968 he was the first person hired to coordinate a black studies program in the United States, which he set up at San Francisco State. A graduate of Langston University and the University of Chicago, he had become involved in the Black Power movement while teaching at Howard University.
WMelissa Victoria Harris-Perry, formerly known as Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell, is an American writer, professor, television host, and political commentator with a focus on African-American politics. Harris-Perry hosted the Melissa Harris-Perry weekend news and opinion television show on MSNBC from 2012 to February 27, 2016.
WWilson A. Head was an American/Canadian sociologist and community planner known for his work in race relations, human rights and peace in the United States, Canada and other parts of the world.
WGloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name bell hooks, is an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist. The name "bell hooks" is borrowed from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks.
WGerald Horne is an American historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
WNathan Irvin Huggins was a distinguished American historian, author and educator. As a leading scholar in the field of African American studies, he was W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of History and of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University as well as director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged 62.
WWalidah Imarisha is an American writer, activist, educator and spoken word artist.
WClifton Herman Johnson (1921–2008) was an American historian noted for founding the Amistad Research Center and for his work on documenting African-American history.
WRalina Joseph is an American academic. She is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, examining representations of race, gender, and sexuality in popular media.
WRobin Davis Gibran Kelley is an American historian and academic, who is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA.
WIbram Xolani Kendi is an American author, professor, anti-racist activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy in America. In July 2020, he assumed the position of director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University.
WJeffery Shaun King is an American writer, civil rights activist and co-founder of Real Justice PAC. King uses social media to promote social justice causes, including the Black Lives Matter movement.
WWilliam Manning Marable was an American professor of public affairs, history and African-American Studies at Columbia University. Marable founded and directed the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. He authored several texts and was active in progressive political causes. At the time of his death, he had completed a biography of human rights activist Malcolm X titled Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011), for which Marable won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for History.
WPatricia McFadden is a radical African feminist, sociologist, writer, educator, and publisher from eSwatini. She is also an activist and scholar who worked in the anti-apartheid movement for more than 20 years. McFadden has worked in the African and global women’s movements as well. As a writer, she has been the target of political persecution. She has worked as editor of the Southern African Feminist Review and African Feminist Perspectives. She currently teaches, and advocates internationally for women's issues. McFadden has served as a professor at Cornell University, Spelman College, Syracuse University and Smith College in the United States. She also works as a "feminist consultant", supporting women in creating institutionally sustainable feminist spaces within Southern Africa.
WHorace Orlando Patterson OM is a Jamaican historical and cultural sociologist known for his work regarding issues of race and slavery in the United States and Jamaica, as well as the sociology of development. He is the John Cowles professor of Sociology at Harvard University. His book Freedom, Volume One, or Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (1991), won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction.
WMary Pattillo is Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University. As of 2016, she has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in African American Studies and has been a Faculty Associate in Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research since 2004. She has formerly served as chair of the Northwestern University Department of Sociology.
WBernice Johnson Reagon is a song leader, composer, scholar, and social activist, who in the early 1960s was a founding member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC) Freedom Singers in the Albany Movement in Georgia. In 1973, she founded the all-black female a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, based in Washington, D.C. Reagon, along with other members of the SNCC Freedom Singers, realized the power of collective singing to unify the disparate groups who began to work together in the 1964 Freedom Summer protests in the South.“After a song,” Reagon recalled, “the differences between us were not so great. Somehow, making a song required an expression of that which was common to us all.... This music was like an instrument, like holding a tool in your hand.”
WHollis Robbins is an American academic and editor. Her scholarship focuses on African-American literature.
WTricia Rose is an American sociologist and author who pioneered scholarship on hip hop. Her studies mainly probe the intersectionality of pop music and gender. Now at Brown University, she is a professor of Africana Studies and is the director of the Center for Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. Rose also co-hosts a podcast, The Tight Rope, with Cornel West.
WFrances Geneva Handy Southall was an American musicologist, pianist, and college professor.
WJohn Stauffer is Professor of English, American Studies, and African American Studies at Harvard University. He writes and lectures on the Civil War era, antislavery, social protest movements, and photography.
WFrance Winddance Twine is a Black and Native American sociologist, ethnographer, visual artist. and documentary filmmaker. Twine's research has made significant contributions to interdisciplinary research on racism/anti-racism, family studies, technology studies and organizational studies. She has conducted field research in Brazil, the UK, and the United States on race, racism, and anti-racism. She has published more than 90 articles, review essays, and books on these topic and, in 2020, was awarded the Distinguished Career Award by the Race, Class, and Gender section of the American Sociological Association for her intellectual, innovative and creative contributions to sociology. Twine is the first Black North American woman scholar to publish a book on race and racism in rural Brazil after the end of military dictatorship during the "abertura". Her most recent book, Geek Girls: Inequality and Opportunity in Silicon Valley, was just announced as being in press. It is due out in May, 2022.
WAkinyele Umoja is an American educator and author who specializes in African-American studies. As an activist, he is a founding member of the New Afrikan People's Organization and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. In April 2013, New York University Press published Umoja's book We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. Currently, he is a Professor and Department Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University (GSU).
WCarole McAlpine Watson is an American academic who served twice as acting Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, first in 2009 and again in 2013 to 2014. Watson studied African American literature and authored Her Prologue, a scholarly bibliography of novels by African American women published between 1859 and 1965.
WCornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, political activist, social critic, actor, and public intellectual. The grandson of a Baptist minister, West focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society and the means by which people act and react to their "radical conditionedness". A socialist, West draws intellectual contributions from multiple traditions, including Christianity, the Black church, Marxism, neopragmatism, and transcendentalism. Among his most influential books are Race Matters (1994) and Democracy Matters (2004).
WJohn Edgar Wideman is an American novelist, short story writer, memoirist, and essayist. He was the first person to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice. His writing is known for experimental techniques and a focus on the African-American experience.
WTiffany Willoughby-Herard is an American academic and author who is an associate professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine and President-Elect of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. Her research focusses on black political thought, black radical movements, and queer and trans sexualities.
WAmos Nelson Wilson was an African-American theoretical psychologist, social theorist, Pan-African thinker, scholar, author and a professor of psychology at the City University of New York.