Honorees

Dr. Bettye Collier-Thomas (Temple University): Bettye Collier-Thomas, Professor of History at Temple University, received her PhD in United States History from George Washington University in 1974. Appointed by Joseph Duffy, head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, as a Special Consultant to the division of Public Programs (1977-1980), she developed NEH’s first program of technical assistance to black museums and historical organization; and became a founder and officer of the National Association of Black Museums and organized the” First National Conference on Black Museums.” Collier-Thomas is the founder and served as first executive director (1977-1989) of the Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial Museum and the National Archives for Black Women’s History (designated by Congress a National Historic Site and now managed by the National Park Service). Read more…

Dr. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Harvard University): Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.  She is currently the chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and has held this position since 2006. Read the rest….

Dr. Sharon Harley (University of Maryland): Dr. Sharon Harley is an Associate Professor and Chair of the African American Studies Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her Ph.D. in United States History from Howard University and has conducted considerable research on black women’s history, focusing on their gender and labor issues and, most recently, their cultural production and radical politics. She is the editor and a contributor to the anthologies Women’s Labor in the Global Economy: Speaking in Multiple Voices (Rutgers University Press, 2007) and Sister Circle: Black Women and Work (Rutgers, 2002). Read the rest…

Dr Wilma King (University of Missouri, Columbia): I have devoted much of my professional career toward advancing scholarship about women and children of African descent in the nineteenth century. While this is true, I have not forgotten my goal of filling interstices about black women in the United States. It is my intent to publish a study of the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton and African American women. Much of this work has been completed but facets have been delayed due to unprocessed collections at the Clinton Library. Once processed, I will return to Little Rock to complete research needed to eradicate the void about black women as politicians, policy makers, and public servants today. Read more…

Dr. Darlene Clark Hine – Northwestern University

Darlene Clark Hine is a leading historian of the African American experience who helped found the field of black women’s history and has been one of its most prolific scholars. Hine is a 2015 National Women’s History Month Honoree. On July 28, 2014, President Barack Obama honored Hine with a 2013 National Humanities Medal for her contributions in Black Women’s History and pioneering study in race, class, and gender. Hine is past president of the Southern Historical Association (2002-2003), and the Organization of American Historians (2001-2002). She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October 2006.  Read more…

Dr. Jacqueline A. Rouse (Georgia State University): Dr. Jacqueline A. Rouse has been a member of the History Department of Georgia State University since 1991, developing and teaching classes in African American History, specifically African American women. She has also served as associate faculty in the Women Studies Institute and the Department of African American Studies. In 1992, Dr. Rouse served as coordinator in finalizing the development of the African American Studies Department to her specialization in African American History. Her research, teaching, publishing and lecturing explore the community building and racial and gender activism of southern African American women in the tradition of social justice reform, i.e., Lugenia Burns Hope, Black Southern Reformer and Women in the Civil Rights Movement, Trailblazer and Torchbearer, 1941-1965. Read more…

Dr. Brenda E. Stevenson (University of California – Los Angeles): Brenda E. Stevenson is Professor of History at UCLA. She was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia. She attended local public schools before matriculating at the University of Virginia. Her college mentors included Paul Gaston, Barry Gaspar, Joseph Miller, Arnold Rampersad, Vivian Gordon and Joseph Washington. Stevenson went on to Yale, first to the M.A. Program in African American Studies, where John Blassingame, V.P. Franklin, Sylvia Boone, Gerald Jaynes, Robert Stepto, and Henry Louis Gates were mentors. John Blassingame served as her Ph.D. advisor. Other doctoral mentors included Nancy Cott, David Brion Davis, and Edmund Morgan. Read more…

Dr. Janice Sumler-Edmond (Hutson-Tillitoson University): Dr. Sumler-Edmond has served as a professor of United States History, African American History, and Constitutional History and Law at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas since 2002. She is also the director of the W. E. B. DuBois Honors Program that is dedicated to motivating talented students, fostering intellectual independence and excellence, and preparing students for graduate schools and professional careers. Previously, she taught history at Clark Atlanta University and served as the chair of their History Department. For one academic year she worked as an associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. Read more…

Dr. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (Morgan State University): Dr. Rosalyn Marian Terborg-Penn was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her family moved to Queens, New York when she was ten, and there she completed her primary and secondary education. She graduated from Queens College of the City University of New York with a B. A. degree in History. After graduation, Terborg-Penn moved to Washington, D.C. and enrolled in George Washington University. There she earned her MA degree in United States History and Diplomatic History, while she worked as a daycare teacher at Friendship House, a Washington, D. C. settlement house, during the 1960s. Read more…

Dr. Deborah Gray White (Rutgers University) is Board of Governors Professor of History and Women and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is author of Ar’n’t I A Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1985/1999), a gendered analysis of the institution of slavery. She is also the author of Two Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994 (1999), several K-12 text books on United States History, and Let My People Go, African Americans 1804-1860 (1999). Read more…

Dr. Francille Rusan Wilson (University of Southern California) Francille Rusan Wilson is Associate Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, and History at the University of Southern California. She is a product of the segregated and desegregating schools of St. Louis County, Missouri. Wilson earned a B.A. in Political Science from Wellesley College where she co-founded Ethos, Wellesley’s black student organization and was a part of the student activist movement that brought black studies to Wellesley and to Harvard University where she earned a M.A.T. in Social Studies. After directing the Ethnic Studies Program at Mills College in Oakland California, Wilson earned a M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania under the expert guidance of Nell Irvin Painter. Wilson was Director of African American Studies at USC from 2010-2013. She is the current National Director of the Association of Black Women Historians. Read more…

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