Academic Historian

Will Guzmán is an assistant vice chancellor of International Affairs and Community Engagement at North Carolina Central University in Durham. A Florida A&M University alumnus, he is the inaugural Texas Tech University Press Afro-Texans series editor, granted a National Humanities Center fellowship, and won the C. Calvin Smith book prize for Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands. He writes on African American history after 1865 and Afro-Puerto Rican history after 1873.

Currently, Will is coediting Maceo C. Dailey’s Emmett J. Scott: Power Broker of the Tuskegee Machine; Florida’s Black Power Movement; ‘The Hill’ We Climbed; 1876: Prairie View, The University on a Hill; and writing the biography of legendary civil rights and criminal defense New Jersey counsellor Raymond A. Brown: Black Power’s Attorney. A graduate of Passaic High, Will earned a Ph.D. in Borderlands History from the University of Texas–El Paso.

Omali Yeshitela (1941- )

Omali Yeshitela, Pan-Africanist, socialist, and activist, was born Joseph Allen Waller Jr. on October 9, 1941, in St. Petersburg, Florida, to Lucille Waller of Pensacola, Florida, and Joseph Waller of Eatonton, Georgia. Lucille, a licensed practical nurse and cosmetologist, owned multiple hair salons, and Joseph … Read MoreOmali Yeshitela (1941- )

Frederick Humphries (1935-2021)

Frederick Stephen Humphries Sr., university president, professor, and HBCU advocate, was born December 26, 1935, in Apalachicola, Florida to Minnie Fry Henry, a domestic servant and teacher, and Thornton Govan Humphries Sr., a lumber mill worker and salter. A lifelong Catholic, Humphries was influenced by … Read MoreFrederick Humphries (1935-2021)

Bobby Wright (1934-1982)

Bobby Eugene Wright, Pan-African clinical psychologist, mental health administrator, and theorist, was born March 1, 1934 in Anniston, Alabama.  Reared in Hobson City, Alabama’s first all-Black town, by mother Myrtle M. Johnson, stepmother Zellar C. Royle, and father, Bennie Henry Wright (1904-1949), a Monsanto Chemical … Read MoreBobby Wright (1934-1982)

Alonzo Smith “Jake” Gaither (1903-1994)

Alonzo Smith “Jake” Gaither, football coach, was born April 11, 1903 in Dayton, Tennessee to teacher Florence Kyle Gaither and AME minister Jefferson Davis Gaither. Gaither attended Knoxville College, Knoxville, Tennessee in 1919 as a high school freshman and graduated with a B.A. in 1927. … Read MoreAlonzo Smith “Jake” Gaither (1903-1994)

Doxey Wilkerson (1905-1993)

Doxey Alphonso Lewis Alexander Wilkerson, communist, Marxist, professor, author, editor, and union leader, was born April 24, 1905 in Excelsior Springs, Missouri to Mattie L. Wilkerson of Kentucky (1884-1955) and Methodist minister Alphonso Wilkerson. A 1921 graduate of Sumner High School in Kansas City, Kansas, … Read MoreDoxey Wilkerson (1905-1993)

Jesús Colón (1901-1974)

Fabián Jesús Colón López, Afro-Puerto Rican Marxist, socialist, communist, writer, and political and community activist, was born on January 20, 1901 in Cayey, Puerto Rico (PR), to Paula López Colón (1874-1927), a domestic worker, and Mauricio Colón Coto (1863-1920), a baker, jointer, artisan, and US … Read MoreJesús Colón (1901-1974)