CBFS: Black Freedom Movement Women Biographies

Join us for this online event as scholars Noliwe Rooks (Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education), Ashley Robertson Preston (Mary McLeod Bethune in Florida: Bringing Social Justice to the Sunshine State), Sonya Y. Ramsey (Bertha Maxwell-Roddey), and Marcia Walker-McWilliams (Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality) discuss the growing number of biographies focusing on the Freedom Movement from a woman’s perspective.

Noliwe Rooks | Brown University

An interdisciplinary scholar, Noliwe Rooks is the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor of Africana Studies, and the chair of Africana Studies at Brown University. Her work explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history and political life in the United States. She works on the cultural and racial implications of beauty, fashion and adornment; race, capitalism and education, and the urban politics of food and cannabis production.

Rooks is the author of Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education which won an award for non-fiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Her current book project explores how the implementation of integration/desegregation strategies impacted Black children and communities. It is tentatively titled, Integration, An American Dream, and explores four generations of her family history with integration and educational experimentation. Her most recent book is a biography of Mary Mcleod Bethune.

Marcia Walker-McWilliams | Tulane University

Marcia Walker-McWilliams is Executive Director of the Tulane University History Project, a long-term project engaging the impacts of slavery, segregation and issues of racial equity at Tulane University. She is a former Executive Director of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC). She received a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Chicago and an undergraduate degree in Social Policy and African American Studies from Northwestern University. She is the author of Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality (University of Illinois Press, 2016) and co-author of The New Civil Rights Movement Reader: Resistance, Resilience and Justice (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023) with Traci Parker. Marcia has curated historical exhibits at the Chicago Public Library and the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center.

Marcia taught courses in American history and African American Studies at Lone Star College, Prairie View A&M University, the University of Houston, and Rice University where she also served as an Associate Director in the Center for Civic Leadership. She sits on the board of several organizations including the Digital Public Library of America.

Sonya Y. Ramsey | University of North Carolina - Charlotte

Sonya Ramsey grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and attended Howard University, where she received a B.A. in Journalism and received her Master’s and Ph.D. in United States History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies, Dr. Ramsey is the Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Ramsey is the author of Bertha Maxwell-Roddey, a Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership, (University Press of Florida, 2022) and several historical works, including Reading, Writing, and Segregation: a Century of Black Women Teachers in Nashville, published by the University of Illinois Press (2008).

Ashley Robertson Preston | Howard University

Dr. Ashley Robertson Preston is an Assistant Professor of History at Howard University and Director of Undergraduate Studies.

Dr. Preston's research interests focus on the activism of Black women during the early twentieth century particularly the work of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune. She is the author of which examines how the educator rose to prominence while fighting for equality at the height or racial unrest in the state. Her recent book t was published with the University Press of Florida. Dr. Preston's past positions in the field of Public History include serving as director of the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation-National Historic Landmark at Bethune-Cookman University while she also was an archives technician for the National Archives for Black Women’s History at the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House-National Historic Site. Educated at Howard University (PhD), Temple University (MA) and Bowie State University (BS), her research has been published in Phylon, Journal of Black Studies, and The Journal of Negro Education.

The founding curators of this series, Professors Jeanne Theoharis (Brooklyn College/CUNY) and Komozi Woodard (Sarah Lawrence College), introduced a new paradigm that challenged the older geography, leadership, ideology, culture and chronology of Civil Rights historiography. Jeanne Theoharis continues in her role and is joined by Robyn C. Spencer-Antoine (Wayne State University) ) as co-curator. Komozi Woodard continues to advise the series from an emeritus position. Discussions take place on the first Thursday of each month.

Learn more: http://www.blackfreedomstudies.org

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

ACCESSIBILITY | Live captioning is available for streaming programs. ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Please submit your request at least two weeks in advance by emailing [email protected].

PRESS | Please send all press inquiries (photo, video, interviews, audio-recording, etc) at least 24-hours before the day of the program to Leah Drayton at [email protected]. Please note that professional video recordings are prohibited without expressed consent.

Conversations in Black Freedom Studies is supported by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Additional support provided by Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation.

Event Venue

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, United States