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.

José Barbosa (1857-1921)

José Celso Barbosa Alcalá, a physician, polemicist, professor, politician, and publisher, was born on July 27, 1857 in Bayamón, Puerto Rico to Carmen Alcalá and Hermógenes Barbosa, a brick mason and San Antonio sugar mill overseer.  Barbosa’s life traversed significant periods: Spanish colonization; Grito de … Read MoreJosé Barbosa (1857-1921)

Julia de Burgos (1914-1953)

Julia de Burgos was a celebrated literary icon of the Americas whose themes of Blackness, feminism, love, migration, nationalism, and nature helped birth the 1960s Nuyorican movement. Julia Constanza Burgos García, teacher, activist, journalist, and poet, was born February 17, 1914 in Santa Cruz, Carolina, … Read MoreJulia de Burgos (1914-1953)

Georgina Falú (1939- )

Georgina Falú Pesante, university executive, community organizer, professor, and Pan-Africanist, was born on April 23, 1939 in Santurce, Puerto Rico to María Magdalena “Malen” Pesante Santana, business owner and homemaker, and Juan “Juanín” Falú Zarzuela, civil rights activist. Her father created the League to Promote … Read MoreGeorgina Falú (1939- )

Imari Abubakari Obadele, I (1930-2010)

Imari Obadele, black power activist, reparations advocate, and college professor, is best known as co-founder of the Republic of New Afrika. Obadele was born Richard Bullock Henry on May 2, 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His homemaker mother, Vera N. Robinson Henry, and his father, Walter … Read MoreImari Abubakari Obadele, I (1930-2010)

Maude E. Craig Sampson Williams (1880-1958)

Maude Craig, public school teacher, suffragist, civil rights and community activist, was born in Austin, Texas in February 1880 to Marie Sanders Craig, a homemaker, and George Washington Craig, a grocer. In 1900, Craig graduated from Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College (now Prairie … Read MoreMaude E. Craig Sampson Williams (1880-1958)

Raymond Aloysius Brown (1915-2009)

Raymond A. Brown, a prominent civil rights activist, attorney, and military officer was born on May 6, 1915 in Fernandina Beach, Florida. His mother, Elizabeth Christopher Traeye, was a domestic, teacher and homemaker who in 1930 helped establish Christ the King, Jersey City’s only Black … Read MoreRaymond Aloysius Brown (1915-2009)

James Nathaniel Eaton, Sr. (1930-2004)

James N. Eaton, archivist, curator, museum founder, distinguished professor of history and pioneering architect of the Black studies movement in Florida was born in Richmond, Virginia on September 14, 1930 to Sarah Cousin Eaton, a domestic, and John Jasper Eaton, Sr., a broom maker, World … Read MoreJames Nathaniel Eaton, Sr. (1930-2004)