Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor<\/p>\n
Professor of History<\/p>\n
Professor at the SNF Agora Institute<\/p>\n
Director of Graduate Studies<\/p>\n
I am a historian, writer, and commentator who focuses on how black Americans have shaped the history of American democracy.\u00a0This theme runs through my\u00a0scholarship,\u00a0<\/a>commentary and<\/a>\u00a0creative projects<\/a>.<\/p>\n My latest book is\u00a0The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>coming from Basic Books in March 2025. My other books include a prize-winning history of African American women\u2019s politics titled\u00a0Vanguard: How Black Women Overcame Barrier, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All<\/a>, from\u00a0<\/em>Basic Books in 2020. In 2018, I published a new history of the early African American struggle for citizenship.\u00a0Birthright Citizens<\/em><\/a>\u00a0examines how black Americans constructed their legal rights in a world predominated by the view that were non-citizens without rights.\u00a0My first book,\u00a0All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900<\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>examined black debates about women\u2019s rights, and was inspired by the women I\u2019d met as a girl at Bennett College. I extended this work in 2015 with a co-edited volume,\u00a0Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n