Our Historians

Dr. A. Absher earned her PhD at the University of Washington. Currently, she is teaching history and composition as a SAGES Fellow at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. The University of Michigan press plans to publish her first book, which examines race in Chicago as seen through the eyes of African American musicians in the city, in the spring of 2013.

Aaron Modica is a graduate of the master’s program in Educational Leadership at the University of Washington, Seattle. He has a BA and MA in Sociology from the University of Nevada, Reno. He is currently full-time faculty in the sociology department at Highline College.

Abdallah Y. Hegazy is a 2009 graduate of the University of Washington, Seattle where he majored in Finance. While studying at the UW Business School, he worked as a tutor at the department’s Writing Center. His recent work experiences have been in financial budgeting and analysis. He has a long and abiding interest in politics, literature, and history, particularly that centered around the African diaspora.

Abe Kaul is currently a non-matriculated student at the University of Washington. Abe graduated with a BA. in Political Science from Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon in the spring of 2007. He plans to attend law school next year.

Abigail Swanson is an undergraduate at the University of Washington working to attain her BA in History. Abigail has an interest in African American history. Upon graduating, Abigail plans to teach English abroad.

Adam Arenson is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. He holds an A.B. from Harvard College and a Ph.D. from Yale University. He is a historian of nineteenth-century North America, investigating the cultural and political history of slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction and tracing the development of American cities, especially in the American West and its borderlands.

His first book, The Great Heart of the Republic: St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War (Harvard University Press, 2011) is now available. He has presented preliminary research from After the Underground Railroad at the biennial Association for Canadian Studies in the United States conference, and as an invitee to the Borderlands/Borderlines symposium at the Library of Congress in 2010. He has also published a half-dozen articles, including pieces on Dred Scott’s family and Anglo-Saxonism in the Yukon Territory. He is a regular contributor to the Making History Podcast blog.

Adam Christian Smith graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and minor in History in 2012. His goal is to work in public relations for a city, veteran’s advocacy group, or attain a marketing position.

Adam Fletcher Sasse is the historian and author behind NorthOmahaHistory.com. He has written more than 800 articles related to Omaha, Nebraska, and is the author of #OmahaBlackHistory: African American People, Places and Events in the History of Omaha, Nebraska, as well as North Omaha History Volumes 1-3. He is also a co-author with Preston Love, Jr. of “A History of African Americans in Nebraska” in Roots of Justice: Historical Truth & Reconciliation in Nebraska. Lincoln, NE: Nebraska Truth and Reconciliation Project (In press). His @NorthOmahaHistory social media outreach includes 15,000 daily followers and he presents on North Omaha’s history throughout the city several times annually.

Adam Henig is the author of Watergate’s Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night Watchman (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2021). He is also the author of Alex Haley’s Roots: An Author’s Odyssey (2014), Baseball Under Siege: The Yankees, the Cardinals, and a Doctor’s Battle to Integrate Spring Training (2016), and the soon-to-be released Baseball's Outcast: The Story of Ron LeFlore (Rowman & Littlefield, 2026).

Adam’s writings have appeared in Time, Detroit Metro Times, Tampa Bay Times, Washington Independent Review of Books, History News Network, San Francisco Book Review, and the website BlackPast.

For more information, visit www.adamhenig.com.

Adam Rozen-Wheeler earned his B.A. in Jewish Studies from the University of Washington in 2017. While his focus is in Jewish history, he has studied American history (including African American history) at length. In addition to his article contributions to BlackPast.org, Adam serves as the website’s grant writer, helping raise funds needed to keep BlackPast.org in operation.

Adam grew up in Tacoma, Washington, where he received an Associate’s Degree from Tacoma Community College, and is currently a member of the Orthodox Jewish community in Seattle. He works as a contract grant writer and teacher.

Adrienne N. Wartts received her M.A. in American Culture Studies, with an emphasis in African American Studies, from Washington University in St. Louis. She is an adjunct professor of film studies at Webster University. As a contributing writer for Jerry Jazz Musician magazine, she has interviewed Rick Coleman, author of Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock ‘N’ Roll and Elizabeth Pepin, author of Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era. Adrienne is the recipient of the 2009 Norman Mailer Writers Colony Scholarship for biography writing.

Ahmad Muhammad is a Trinidadian-American raised in the frigid Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. He is a recent college graduate having spent much time in the Broome County area where he earned two degrees, a bachelor’s in Human Development from Binghamton University with ample coursework in sociology and African history, and an associate’s degree from Broome Community College. Having now relocated from the bustling paced New York City to the leisurelier city of Columbus Ohio, Ahmad pursues a career in law enforcement to fuel his devotion to becoming a successful author. When he is not working, he is working. His activities include reading books, watching boxing and MMA, writing poetry, researching history, trying every bit of music (pun intended), and completing his upcoming graphic novel.

Ajuan M. Mance is a Professor of English at Mills College in Oakland, CA. She holds a B.A. from Brown University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. She is the author of two books, Inventing Black Women: African American Women Writers and Self-Representation, 1877-2000 (University of Tennessee Press, 2007) and Proud Legacy: The Colored Schools of Malvern, Arkansas and the Community that Made Them (Henson-Benson Foundation, 2013). Her third book, Before There Was Harlem: An Anthology of African American Literature from the Long Nineteenth Century, will be published by the University of Tennessee Press.

Alan Gilbert is John Evans professor in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. His Ph.D. in Government and B.A. in Social Studies are from Harvard University; he received an M.SC. in Political Sociology from the London School of Economics and did advanced study in the Department of Philosophy at Cornell. He is the author of Marx’s Politics: Communists and Citizens (Rutgers), Democratic Individuality (Cambridge) and Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy?(Princeton).

Albert S. Broussard is professor of History at Texas A&M University, where he has taught since 1985. Professor Broussard has published six books, Expectations of Equality: A History of Black Westerners (2012), Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900-1954 (1993), African American Odyssey: The Stewarts, 1853-1963 (1998), American History: The Early Years to 1877, and The American Republic Since 1877, and The American Vision (co-authored with James McPherson, Alan Brinkley, Joyce Appleby, and Donald Ritchie). He is past president of the Oral History Association and a former chair of the Nominating Committee of the Organization of American Historians. He has also served on the nominating committees of the Southern Historical Association, the Oral History Association and the Western History Association. Additionally, Professor Broussard served on the council of the American History Association, Pacific Coast Branch and chair of the W. Turrentine Jackson Book Prize Committee for the Western History Association. In 2006, Broussard served on the Frederick Jackson Turner book prize committee for the Organization of American Historians and has served on the De Santis Book Prize Committee for the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Historians, where he is also a member of the Council. He was the recipient of a distinguished teaching award from Texas A&M University in 1997 and presented the University Distinguished Faculty lecture in 2000. He has served as President of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. In the spring of 2005, Broussard was the Langston Hughes Professor of American Studies at the University of Kansas. Broussard also served three terms on the board of directors of Humanities Texas and as a consultant to the Texas Education Agency. He participates regularly in teacher training workshops sponsored by Humanities Texas and school districts throughout the state of Texas. Broussard is currently writing a history of racial activism and civil rights in the American West from World War II to the present.

Albert Rodriguez is a doctoral candidate in U.S. history from the 1850s to 1965 at the University of Houston. His specific area of study is Black/Brown relations on the South Texas Borderlands and the West with an emphasis on gender and identity formation. Simply put he seeks to understand how Blacks and ethnic Mexicans got along or did not. His research interests include Chicana, Latino, African American, BlacXican history, race/ethnicity, Gender, and Queer Theory. His dissertation “The Making of the Modern Lower Rio Grande Valley: Situating and Reframing Race, Class and Ethnicity in Urbanizing South Texas, 1928-1965” use hybridity and transculturation to analyze Blacks and ethnic Mexicans on the border and try to understand the divisions between both ethnic groups. The purpose of the project is to Blacken the Borderlands and move South Texas into the West. By Blacken the Borderlands he means that most of the scholarship based in the South Texas Borderlands and even throughout the Borderlands are essentially Anglo/Mexican/Mexican American discourses. Rodriquez received a BA and MA in History from the University of Texas Pan American in Edinburg, Texas.

Alec Read-Skyhawk was born in Walnut Creek, California in 1998 to Janet Read and David Skyhawk. He has lived in the Bay Area his entire life. Alec attended Northgate High School, where his passion for social sciences was ignited when he took his first Sociology course. He is a lifetime member of the California Scholarship Federation. Alec played basketball and baseball at Northgate. He is currently a senior at the University of Oregon, majoring in Sociology with a minor in Environmental Science and an emphasis on Black Studies. Alec is a member of Alpha Kappa Delta National Honor Society.

I am Alex Rye; I am a current student at Texas A&M University, majoring in Finance. I became aware of the racism and injustices of the African-American community as a young kid, as I moved to a predominantly white neighborhood and went to a high school made as a “white flight” school in the late ’60s. I had experienced racism from other students, and it made me aware that there is still much work to be done for equal rights. I enjoy playing the trumpet and hanging with friends.

Alexander J. Opsahl is a 2009 graduate of the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Arts in history. After living up in Seattle for five years, he has recently moved back to his hometown of Portland, Oregon. After working for a couple of years, Alex wishes to go back to school for his Masters in Business Administration and eventually own his own business.

Alexander Klein spent just under two years at the University of Michigan but is currently finishing his studies at the University of Washington pursuing a double major in Economics and Communications with a minor in History. Alex plays on the University of Washington soccer team and is a huge fan of all sports.

Alexandra Laird is a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a research assistant at the Center of the American West. Originally from western Montana, she holds a B.A. in Humanities from Villanova University and is currently interested in the ethics of wildlife reintroduction, biological species concepts, federal public lands policy, and American legal history.

Alexis Newman is a freshman attending the University of Washington, Seattle. Alexis is planning to major in Business Administration/Management. Originally from Mt. Vernon, Washington, in 1998 she moved from there and eventually settled in the Tri-Cities (Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco) Washington. Alexis is interested in learning about the history of the places where she has lived and of where she is originally from.

Ali Bilow is an undergraduate student at the University of Washington where she studies history, anthropology, and African studies. She is currently a program intern at the Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas, a non-profit organization in Seattle which presents and produces African-American cultural programs. In the future she hopes to go on to graduate school to study African history.

Professor Alicia I. Rodriquez-Estrada teaches U.S. and Mexican American History in the Behavioral & Social Sciences Department at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College. She is the author “From Peola to Carmen: Fredi Washington, Dorothy Dandridge, and Hollywood’s Portrayal of the Tragic Mulatto” in African-American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000 and “Image On and Off the Screen, 1925-1944: Dolores Del Rio and Lupe Velez” in Writing the West: Race, Class and Gender (University of Oklahoma, 1997) as well as a contributor to the Latina’s in the United States: a Historical Encyclopedia (2006).