VITA
EDUCATION
Ph.D. The University of Mississippi May 2010 History
M.A. Jackson State University May 2003 History
B.A. Jackson State University May 2001 History
RESEARCH AREAS
Social Justice, Race relations, the Post-Reconstruction Era, American South, Oral Histories/Qualitative Methods, Education in the South, Digital Humanities, intersections of gender and race, archival studies, civil rights activism, heritage studies, digital humanities, and public history
TEACHING/WORK EXPERIENCE
2021- Present Assistant Director of the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice
Prairie View A &M University, Prairie View, Texas
Managing several public history projects via the Epa Committee including several grant funded projects, budgeting, facilitating institutes for college professors and grade school teachers, fundraising, researching, and developing scholarship
2016- Present Associate Professor of History (Assistant Professor 2016- 2021)
Prairie View A &M University, Prairie View, Texas
Instruction- teaching both halves of the U.S. History surveys, Intro Historical Research, Senior Capstone Research Course and several Special topics courses
2003-2016 Assistant Professor of History/ Instructor of History (2003-2010)
Rust College, Holly Springs, Mississippi
Instruction - three sections of 100 level first and second half U.S. History, one section of 300 level U.S. History to social science Majors, two 100 level sections in World History and one section of Mississippi History. Also, taught 100 level Introduction to the African Diaspora course(s). Other courses taught include African American History I and II, Intro to Black Studies and Humanities Seminar
Social Science Area Coordinator- advising majors, facilitating Intern placements, course development, advisor for the social
Club and preparing social science education majors for licensure Exams and teaching placements
(Capable of teaching online or mixed/hybrid courses)
2001-2003 Graduate Assistant
Jackson State University, Department of History, Jackson, Mississippi
My duties included lecturing and grading papers.
*Other teaching experiences available upon request.
ADDITIONAL STUDIES
Digital Born Scholarly Publishing NEH Summer Institute, Brown University, 2022
The National Humanities Center, Co-Coordinator, Teacher Institute: Teaching African American Studies Summer Institute: Understanding the Long View of the African Diaspora, 2022
United Negro College Fund-Carnegie Mellon Seminar in Salvador, Brazil, Historical Perspectives of Race/ Blackness, Identity and Beauty in Black Brazil, summer 2013
United Negro College Fund-Carnegie Mellon Seminar in Atlanta, GA, Topic: Archival Research, summer 2010
United Negro College Fund-Carnegie Mellon Seminar in Ghana, West Africa, Topic: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, summer of 2007
American History through Indigenous Eyes, Seminar at New York University, summer 2007
Fulbright Scholar, South Africa, visited eight universities, summer 2004, curriculum development project dealing with creating learning modules regarding my experiences for my World and African Diaspora Courses
Summer Research Program, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, took seminar courses and conducted research directed by Dr. Vernon Burton, summer 1999
HONORS AND AWARDS
2022-2023, Chevron Leadership Academy Faculty Fellow
2021-2022, PVAMU Mellon Center for Teaching Excellence Outstanding Professor Award
2019-2020 Outstanding Departmental Faculty Award, Division of Social Work, Behavioral, and Political Sciences, Marvin D. and June Samuel Brailsford College of Arts and Sciences, Prairie View A &M University.
2018-2019, First Place Non-Stem Category, PVAMU Research Week, Faculty Poster Board Presentations, An Exploratory Study in Israel: The cases of Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC) Monasteries in the Holy Land.
State of Mississippi H.E.A.D.W.A.E. Faculty Member of the Year Award, 2016
Florence Ellen Bell Scholar Award, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey, 2015-2016
DeSoto County African American History Symposium Achievement Award, 2014
Tri-State Defender Men of Excellence Award, 2013
Headstart Volunteer of the Year, 2011
Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher of the Year, Rust College, 2010
Gilder Lehrman Fellowship Dissertation Award, 2008
United Negro College Fund-Mellon Foundation Doctoral Fellowship, 2008- 2009
Department of History, University of Mississippi, Doctoral Fellowship, 2008-2009
GRANTS FUNDED
Co-PI, Covid-19 Relief Grant, Humanities Texas, 20,000.00, This funding will be used to buy equipment and to conduct oral histories on the impact of Covid-19 which will be the start of our archival oral history collection, 2022-2023.
Co-PI, Integrating African American Studies at HBCUs (PVAMU), 600,000.00, the grant host the African American Studies Summer Institute and facilitates the integration of the program at PVAMU, 2022-2025.
Co-PI, Texas Domestic Slave Trade Project, 50,000.00, this project is a collaboration between the University Texas and Prairie View A&M University to build a website documenting and preserving the history the domestic slave trade, 2022-2024.
Co-PI, Toward Culturally Responsive Disaster Management for Limited Resource Producers: The Role of Person, Place and Professional Agencies, 300,000.00, This project will assess the role culture plays in how HUFRs prepare for, cope with and respond to disasters. Three major elements will be examined; they are: 1) farmer perceptions, belief systems, social and family relations, 2) professional disaster related agencies interaction, and 3) socio-economic/policy environmental challenges. There is a need to understand how culture influences processes around these parameters in times of disaster, and subsequently affects the day-to-day activities of HUFRs. The research will address cultural gaps by exploring the impacts of disasters with respect to person, place and profession, 2020-2023.
PI, Rapid Grant, 3,000.00, Prairie View A&M University Office of Research, The COVID- 19 Pandemic and Rural Communities of Color: Examining the Impact of Race, Healthcare Accessibility, and Health Literacy in Waller County Texas; This study employs the collection of survey and interview data to examine the experiences of black residents of Waller County during the epidemic. More specifically, this study explores black resident’s health literacy related to Covid-19, the socio-economic factors impacting their quality of life, and the availability of healthcare in the immediate area. Triangulating these three variables, ultimately, this project analyzes the impact of Covid-19 and race on Waller County’s African American resident’s health.
Resilient Networks, Digital Humanities Projects jumpstart package, 5, 000.00, Project titled- “Utilizing Interactive Maps and Apps to Preserve Local History: Digitizing the Black Experience in Waller County, Texas”, 2017-2018.
PI, National Endowment for the Humanities, 100,000.00, developing the online Center for the Study of Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Black Heritage in North Mississippi, 2011-2014.
Center for Community and Civic Engagement at the University of Southern Mississippi awarded $2,000.00. The purpose of this venture was to promote and develop a service learning project with my history students, 2007.
PUBLICATIONS
Through Mama’s Eyes: Unique Perspectives of Southern Matriarchy, (Book Chapter), "We were all we had:" Transcending Race and forging a Community of Mothers in the Post-Civil Rights Era South, University of Louisiana Lafayette Press, October 2021.
Co-Editor, Contemporary Debates in Social Justice: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Exploring the Lives of Black and Brown Americans, Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2021.
Walle Engedayehu, Ph.D., Marco Robinson, Ph.D, “The State of Ethiopian Jews in Israel: Seamless Integration or Subtle Exclusion?”, Journal of International politics, 2019,1(4), pp. 21-39.
Engaging the Public with and Preserving the History of Texas's first Public Historically Black University. KULA: knowledge creation, dissemination, and preservation studies X(X): X DOI: https://doLorg/10.5334Aula.33, 2018.
Rust College, The First 150 Years and Beyond. (Book Chapter) “A New Life for a Race: Emancipated Blacks of Marshall County, the Origins of Shaw University and the Legacy of Rust College”, (Granthouse Publishing: Little Rock, AR), 2018.
"Telling the Stories of Forgotten Communities: Oral History, Public Memory, and Black Communities in the American South" Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, Volume 13, Number 2, (Spring 2017): 171- 184.
Contributed articles on Rust College and C.L. Franklin, The Mississippi Encyclopedia, Ted Ownby and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds., Ann J. Abadie, Odie Lindsey, and James
G. Thomas, associate eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017).
MUSIQUES NOIRES: L’HISTOIRE D’UNE RÉSISTANCE SONORE, “Floyd Newman:
Cultural Resistance and the Memoirs of a Memphis Jazz and Soul Artist`”, book chapter in an international volume on Music and Cultural Resistance, (Publisher Camion Blanc: Paris, France), September, 2016.
DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECTS
Utilizing Interactive Maps and Apps to Preserve Local History: Digitizing the Black Experience in Waller County, Texas, website: https://resilientdh.org/projects/digitizing-the-black-experience-in-waller-county-texas/
Reconstructing Dabney Lane: Using Online 3D environments to re-construct a Rural Black Community in North Mississippi during the early 1900s (in process)
Merging Oral Histories with 3D Technology: Documenting the experiences of Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) and creating 3D Digital models of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC) Monasteries and Shrines in the Holy Land (Summer 2023)
BOOK REVIEWS
Big Jim Eastland: The Godfather of Mississippi. By J. Lee Annis Jr.. (Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi, 2016. Pp. xii, 426. $35.00, ISBN 978-1-4968-0614-7.), Journal of Southern History, Fall 2018.
Lines Were Drawn: Remembering Court-Ordered Integration at a Mississippi High School. Edited By Teena F. Horn, Alan Huffman, and John G. Jones. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016. Acknowledgments, illustrations, map, notes, index. Pp. xi, 266. $ 35 hard back. ISBN: 978-1-62846-231-9.), Journal of Mississippi History, Spring 2020.
PAPERS/PRESENTATIONS/WORKSHOPS
"Exploring Slavery through Oral Histories: Best Approaches for Centering Descendant’s Voices and Communities in your Study," Texas Oral History Association Annual Conference, Holocaust Museum Houston, 2022.
“Preserving Endangered Historically Significant Communities,” Communicating Sustainability Conference, Goucher College, Baltimore, Maryland, 2022.
Panelist,” Revitalizing America’s Historic Black Towns”, hosted by 400 Years of African American History Commission, 2022.
“On the Upward Trend: The Impact of Prairie View A&M University’s College and Extension Services of Black and Brown Communities in Jim Crow Era Texas,” Born Digital Publishing Summer Institute at Brown University, 2022.
“Pedagogy of African American Studies: Considering the Curriculum,” National Humanities, Teaching African American Studies Summer Institute- Understanding the Long View of the African Diaspora,” 2022.
Wyatt Chapel Juneteenth Commemoration Ceremony, guest speaker, 2022.
Who Owns History? Centering Descendants in the Politics of Preservation, hosted by the Convict Lease Labor Project Sugar Land, Holocaust Museum Houston, 2022.
Texas HBCU Conference, Huston-Tillotson University, “The Work Underway at the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice.”
“Storytelling and Digital Archives,” Black Towns Roundtable, 2022.
Hard Histories Conversations hosted by Martha Jones, John Hopkins University, 2022.
Recovering America’s Unmapped Histories, University of Indiana (Co-hosted by the Organization of American Historians), 2021.
“Redressing the Legacy of Slavery at Prairie View A&M University”, American Association of State and Local History, Little Rock, AR, September 2021.
“Race, Medicine, and African American Experience”, Baylor University College of Medicine, invited lecture, June 2021.
Using Digital Tools to Document the Black Experience in Waller County, Social Science History Association National Conference, Chicago, Ill, November 2019.
Research Collaborations in the Social Sciences, Archive and Agricultural Departments at PVAMU, The National HBCU Faculty Development Conference, Houston, TX, November 2019.
Utilizing the Archive: Research and Service Learning at PVAMU, The National HBCU Faculty Development Conference, Jackson, MS, November 2018.
Digital Humanities Conference 2018, Workshop Facilitator: Jumpstarting Digital Humanities Projects-Collecting and Digitizing Historical Materials, Mexico City, Mexico, June 2018.
“Medical Apartheid and African American History”, Baylor University College of Medicine, invited lecture, June 2018.
“Getting out that Silo: Seeking Interdisciplinary Teaching and Research Opportunities” Faculty Friday, Prairie View A &M University, May, Prairie View, TX, 2018.
“Utilizing Interactive Maps and Apps to Preserve Local History: Digitizing the Black Experience in Waller County, Texas”, American Association of State and Local History, Austin, TX, September 2017.
“Social Progress and Its Impact on the Workplace,” the 13th Annual Texas Diversity and Leadership Conference, Houston, TX, April 2017.
“Our Presence Matters as Mentors,” 2016 UNCF/MELLON Program Conference, Atlanta, GA, October 2016.
“By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them:” Post Civil War North Mississippi, Emancipated Blacks and the Founding of Shaw Univeristy (Rust College), Mississippi Jubilee, hosted by the Mississippi Humanities Council, Tougaloo College, April, 2015.
“The Long Civil Rights Movement in the Mid-South”, The Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Memphis, TN, October 2014.
“Student Activism at Rust College, 1960-1963,” Fannie Lou Hamer Symposium, Jackson State University, 2011.
“Race Men and Women in the Diaspora,” UNCF-Carnegie Mellon Faculty Seminar, Atlanta, GA, July, 2010.
“A New Day Dawning: Freedwomen in Mississippi’s use of Public and Private Space during Reconstruction, The Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Cincinnati, OH, October 2009.
AWARDS
Mellon Outstanding Professor, 2021-2022
2019-2020 Outstanding Departmental Faculty Award, Division of Social Work, Behavioral, and Political Sciences, Marvin D. and June Samuel Brailsford College of Arts and Sciences, Prairie View A &M University.
