Samuel Proctor Oral History Program

Dr. Akinyele Umoja, Georgia State University

Dr. Akinyele Umoja (Email) is Chair and Professor of African American Studies at Georgia State University. His engaged scholarship focuses on African American Social Movements, specifically the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement. His most recent book published by New York University Press, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement, relies upon oral history, archival material, and scholarly literature to reconstruct the use of armed resistance by Black activists and supporters in Mississippi to challenge racist terrorism, segregation, and fight for human rights and political empowerment from the early 1950s through the late 1970s.

 

Dr. William H. Chafe, Duke University

Dr. William H. Chafe (Email) is Mary Alice Baldwin Professor of History and Co-Director of the Program on History, Public Policy and Social Change at Duke University. His work focuses on the 20^th Century, Women’s Issues, Race, and Oral History. Dr. Chafe has written 12 books overall, and his work on the development of the sit-in movement in North Carolina helped re-orient scholarship on Civil Rights history towards oral history and community studies. Dr. Chafe recently received the Lillian Smith Award for Remembering Jim Crow.

 

Dr. Michael Honey, University of Washington, Tacoma

Dr. Michael Honey (Email) is Haley Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History and Labor and Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, Tacoma. His work explores Labor and Ethnic Studies in American History, and he is noted for his extensive use of oral history, deep archival research, and vibrant writing style. His books have been recognized by the Robert F. Kennedy Book Foundation, the Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association, and the United Association of Labor Educators. His new film, “Love and Solidarity: Rev. James Lawson and Nonviolence in the Search for Workers’ Rights,” screened in Seattle in October.

 

Dr. Benjamin Houston, Newcastle University

Dr. Benjamin Houston (Email) is a Senior Lecturer of American History at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. His work interrogates the Civil Rights and the African American Freedom Struggle, The U.S. South, 20th Century U.S. History, and Oral history. Dr. Houston is the director of the Remembering African American Pittsburgh [RAP] Oral History Project, sponsored by the Center for African American Urban Studies and the Economy with the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the author of The Nashville Way: Racial Etiquette and the Struggle for Social Justice in a Southern City.  

 

Dr. Hasan Jeffries, Ohio State University

Dr. Hasan Jeffries (Email) is a Professor of History at the Ohio State University, and he holds a joint appointment with the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. His research emphasis is African American History and American History Since 1877. His most recent book, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt, tells the remarkable story of the local people and SNCC organizers who ushered in the Black Power era by transforming rural Lowndes County, Alabama from a citadel of violent white supremacy into the center of southern black militancy by creating the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), an all-black, independent, political party that was also the original Black Panther Party.

 

Dr. Gaye Theresa Johnson, University of California, Los Angeles

Dr. Gaye Theresa Johnson (Email) is a Professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Johnson writes and teaches on race and racism, cultural history, spatial politics, and political economy. Her new book, published by the University of California Press, is entitled Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement in Los Angeles. It is a cultural history of civil rights and spatial struggles among Black and Brown people in Los Angeles.

 

Dr. Carlos Muñoz, University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Carlos Muñoz (Email) is Professor Emeritus in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley. A professor for over 43 years, Dr. Muñoz was the founding chair of the first Chicano Studies department in the nation at California State University, Los Angeles in 1968, and the founding chair of the National Association of Chicana & Chicano Studies (NACCS). His book, Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement won the Gustavus Myers Book Award for “outstanding scholarship in the study of human rights in the United States.” The 1st edition of the book underwent 12 printings and has become the classic study of the origins of the Movement. Dr. Muñoz a pioneer in the creation of undergraduate and graduate curricula in the disciplines of Chicano/Latino & Ethnic Studies. His research and teaching foci include Ethnic Studies, Chicano and Latino Studies, Social and Revolutionary Movements, the African Presence in Mexico, and the politics of U.S. Racial and Ethnic Identity.

 

Solymar Solá Negrón

Solymar Solá Negrón (Email) is the Co-Founder and Program Director of Proyecto Algarabía, a global youth movement-building project whose aim is to create platforms that empower youth through intercommunity dialogues, oral history, oral expression, art and theater in local communities. Negrón has played leadership roles in several student of color organizations, focusing on outreach and retention of students of color in education, the formation of critical ethnic studies, labor and union organizing and several political and cultural initiatives nationwide. Her community work focuses on issues of violence, sex work, criminalization, abolition, labor, alternative education, decoloniality and cross-border youth building.

 

Dr. Vicki Ruiz, University of California, Irvine

Dr. Vicki Ruiz (Email) is the Distinguished Professor of History and Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine and Former Dean of the School of Humanities. Her work focuses on Chicano and Latino History, U.S. Women’s History, Immigration, and Labor. Dr. Ruiz’s recent publications include From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America, and Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950, which won the National Women’s Political Caucus Distinguished Achievement Award. Dr. Ruiz is also a Fellow with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and president of the American Historical Association.

 

Caroline D. Vickers, Esquire

Caroline Vickers (Email) is a licensed attorney in the state of Maryland. She attended Howard University School of Law, where she organized community outreach programs to advise noncustodial parents of their parental rights and responsibilities and represented parents and third parties in the Howard University School of Law Child Welfare/Family Justice Clinic. Caroline also attended the University of Florida, where she was involved in the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, and attended the Mississippi Freedom Project’s annual research trip in 2011 and coordinated the SPOHP public program, “Inside the Activities Studio: A Sit Down with Margaret Block.”

Caroline is currently a judicial law clerk at the Sussex County Family Court in Georgetown, Delaware.

For additional information, contact SPOHP, call the offices at (352) 392-7168, and connect with us online today.