Our Historians

William Loren Katz is the author of forty American history books and has been affiliated with New York University for thirty years. He is the editor of the 146-volume reprint series, The American Negro: History and Literature and the 69-volume reprint series: The Anti-Slavery Crusade in America.

Mr. Katz, who taught U.S. history in New York secondary schools and several colleges, has also served as a consultant to the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Senate, a committee of the British House of Commons, and to various school systems from Seattle, Washington to Dade County, Florida. He lives in New York and lectures around the world.

William L. Lang, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of History at Portland State University, where he taught Environmental, Public, and Pacific Northwest History. His research into African American history in Montana came as a result of his dissertation at University of Delaware—“Black Bootstraps: Abolitionist Educators’ Ideology and the Education of the Northern Free Negro, 1828-1860,” at Carroll College in Helena (1971-1978) and as editors of Montana, The Magazine of Western History (1978-1989) at the Montana Historical Society. Lang wrote “The Nearly Forgotten Blacks on Last Chance Gulch, 1900-1912,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 70 (April 1979): 50-57 and “Tempest on Clore Street: Race and Politics in Helena, Montana, 1906,” Scratchgravel Hills 3 (1981). He is also author of Confederacy of Ambition: William Winlock Miller and the Making of Washington Territory (1996), Two Centuries of Lewis and Clark (2004), Two Centuries of Lewis & Clark: Reflections on the Voyage of Discovery (2004), Explorers of the Maritime Pacific Northwest (2016), and editor of Centennial West (1991), Stories From an Open Country (1995), and Great River of the West (1999).

William P. O'Brien, Ph.D. is the Intermountain Region's CESU Cultural Resource Specialist stationed in Tucson, at the University of Arizona. He formerly held the position as Program Manager for Cultural Resources and National Register Programs, Intermountain Region, Santa Fe/Denver, National Park Service. He has worked in the field of public history since 1977 and served as Historic Preservation Officer for the city of Independence, Missouri from 1977 to 1984 and as a historian for the state of Missouri from 1984 to 1986. Since 1986, he has worked as a historian and supervisor for the National Park Service. He has worked and consulted on a variety of projects including presidential sites such as the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site in Independence, Missouri, the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains, Georgia . He also served as historian and cultural resource specialist for the National Park Service's Comprehensive Design Plan for the White House 1993-2001.

William “Duke” Smither is a Historical Novelist, U.S. Navy Veteran (Viet Nam Era, Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuban Expeditionary Forces), native of Frankfort, Kentucky, resident of Richmond, Virginia, and retired Sr. Security Investigator for Dominion Energy, Inc.

A former Sports Reporter for his college newspaper, as a freshman at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), and Reporter/ trainee at the Richmond Afro-American newspaper, he later graduated from St. Paul’s College (B.S. Business Management), returning to VCU for postgraduate studies in Criminal Justice Administration during his working career, along with independent study programs in Black History (J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College) and Ancient African History (Virginia State University).

In retirement, additional research and writings led to the history-related journal he created at www.backstreetdjeli.com, and assignments as contributing writer for BlackPast.Org, the international web-based reference center for African-American History, at www.blackpast.org. He also began writing his historical-fiction trilogy on Western Hemispheric marronage and resistance to European colonialism and slavery.

His debut novel, Backroads to ‘Bethlehem’: Odysseys of the Maroon Warrior… (2018) was the trilogy’s first installment. Passage(s) to Saint-Domingue: Jakobe’s Journey… (2022) is the sequel. The third book, Children of the Swamp (working title only) is underway, pending completion. His current website is: https://authorwilliamsmither.com/.

Willie Brenc is a 2013 graduate of the University of Washington (B.A. Political Science and History). In fall 2014 he began attending Stanford Law School. As an undergraduate, Willie studied a variety of topics and conducted intensive research projects on affirmative action and United States-South Africa relations.

Wilma Johnson is currently Executive Director of Greater Love, Inc., Christian Educational Institute, an educational consulting firm in Georgia. She received an Ed.D. degree in 2004 and a MSW degree in 1994 from Clark Atlanta University, and her undergraduate degree in Black Studies from San Jose State University. Dr. Johnson has been accepted into the Biblical Studies, Master’s program at Beulah Heights University. A native of San Jose, California she now resides in Riverdale, Georgia. Wilma is currently working on a history project, from the Pentecostal perspective, on African American women preachers and evangelists who lived in the 1800s.

Wilson Edward Reed was born and raised in Vicksburg, Mississippi on a family farm; was educated in segregated school systems in a close knit rural community. He moved to Seattle to be near family and friends, and graduated from the University of Washington with a BA and a MA in Political Science. Also, he earned a Masters degree in Criminal Justice from the State University of New York-Albany (The Nelson Rockefeller School of Public Affairs and Policy). In 1995 he earned a Ph.D. in Political Science at Northern Arizona University.

Dr. Reed has taught at colleges and universities in the northwest, northeast, and southwest regions of the U.S. His book The Politics of Community Policing: The Case of Seattle, published in 1999, is considered the leading review of the subject in law enforcement. He has used his book for the course “Policing Seattle” which he helped to develop. Dr. Reed recently published an article about women and Black police officers in the Seattle Police department and completed a chapter on Bill Cosby and poor African Americans in the Criminal Justice System for an upcoming anthology. He frequently lectures in the Seattle area on policing youth, diversity issues, poverty in America, and domestic violence and presently teaches in the Global African Studies Program at Seattle University. Dr. Reed is also a Criminal Justice Consultant for the Washington Department of Social Health Services.

Winnifred (Castle) Olsen holds a from B.A. Washington State College, 1938. She worked as Tacoma Public Schools Northwest History Specialist from 1967-84 and is the author of “For the Record—A History of the Tacoma Public Schools,” published in 1985. She was recognized as a WSU Alumna of Achievement in 1997. She received the Washington State Retired Teacher’s Outreach Award in 2000 and the Olympia YWCA Lifetime Achievement 2003. She has been a member of the Thurston County Historic Commission since 1984. Mrs. Olsen was the guiding force for the Bush Family Interpretative Center project, completed in 1997 on the Bush Land Claim in Tumwater and has spoken and written widely on the Bush family.

Winston Benjamin was born in Kingston, Jamaica and grew up in the Bronx NY. He received his B.A. in Economics from Wheaton College. He holds an M.Ed Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Washington. Currently he is a Ph.D. student in the College of Education. Benjamin has worked in the youth development field for three years in Boston, Massachusetts. He was also a charter school administrator and teacher for three years in Chelsea, Massachusetts. His professional and personal life has been driven by a desire to understand issues surrounding civil rights and equity. His area of interest is multicultural education. Specifically he is focused on examining the Jamaican immigrants experience in the U.S. school system.

Woubakal Tesfaye was born in 1986 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is a graduate of Nazareth School, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and has attended Gondar University in Gondar, Ethiopia. She is a Sociology Graduate. During her stay at Gondar University she was vice chair person of the student council and was also involved in women’s affair of the university. Woubakal is currently a Project Officer in a Finnish Adoption Agency in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She would like to continue her Master in Sociology and hopes that one day she will open an organization focusing on help to the elderly.

Xiaoshun Zeng is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research focuses on the intersection of race/ethnicity, medicine, and sexuality in socialist China. His dissertation, “Diagnosing Minorities: STD Campaigns and Ethnic Health in China’s Inner Asian Frontiers, 1949-1964,” studies how the People’s Republic of China launched anti-syphilis campaigns to incorporate the population of Inner Mongolia, eastern Tibet, and Xinjiang into the Chinese socialist state-building project. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, the American Historical Association, and the University of Washington.

Yonaia Robinson was born and raised in Washington State. She is currently a master’s student in the Department of Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. She plans to obtain her Ph.D. and go on to pursue a teaching career at the university level. Her initial interest peaked after having taken an African American history course on slavery and reconstruction when she first came to the university as an undergraduate. Her devotion to researching and learning about Black history and that of other minoritized groups lies in the failing of educational systems around the U.S to provide a more accurate and inclusive curriculum. She believes that all students would benefit from a more holistic approach, one that acknowledges the codes of power enacted in daily classroom life, provides them with alternative viewpoints, and includes the contributions people of color have made throughout this nation’s history. Yonaia is essentially an advocate for telling it like it is, and fully intends to do so in her future endeavors as a professor.

Yulonda Eadie Sano is an assistant professor of history in the Department of Social Sciences at Alcorn State University in Lorman, Mississippi, where she teaches courses in African-American, American, and Women’s History. She received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Kentucky and her Ph.D. in history from The Ohio State University. Her current research explores the desegregation of secondary schools and medical colleges in the South.

Wallace Yvonne Tollette is a professional speaker, author, historian, and publisher. She began her career as a secondary public school teacher in Denver and Jefferson County Public Schools where she was also the forensics coach. She holds a B.A. in English, speech and drama and an M.A. in communication and theatre, each from the University of Colorado. Tollette is the co-author (with Paul Stewart) of Black Cowboys, (1986) and author of Our Beginnings: A History of the Epworth United Methodist Church, (1989).

Her company, Western Images Publications, established in 1989, has published five books featuring leaders from across the State and nation. Tollette also served as administrator for three years and as executive director for six years of the Black American West Museum & Heritage Center in Denver.

Zaakira L. Sadrud-Din is currently a PhD student and Graduate Assistant in the History Department at Morgan State University. Her research topic interests are the antebellum South and the education during the Reconstruction period. She previously received her master’s degree in history at Florida A&M University and earned her bachelor’s in history at Dillard University in New Orleans.

Zach Schrempp is an undergraduate student at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is studying history and civil engineering.

Zachary McFerren is a freshman at Texas A&M University. He is from Virginia but has ethnic ties to several countries, including Guyana, Germany, and Nigeria. Although Zachary plans to major in Petroleum Engineering, he possesses a great interest in the modern state of racial relations in the United States and internationally. In his leisure time, he runs a reselling business that he developed in early 2018 and plays both football and basketball. His future goals include graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Petroleum Engineering, where he plans to enter the workforce immediately, and continuing his reselling practice.

Zakiya R. Adair is an Associate Professor in African American Studies and Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The College of New Jersey. Her research revolves around black American cultural history in the areas of black internationalism and trans-Atlantic black expressive culture. Additionally Adair works in the area of feminism and neoliberalism in higher education. She is the recipient of many grants and fellowships including a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Schomborg Scholar in Residence postdoctoral fellowship, NEH Summer Institutes. She has also held a visiting professorship in American Studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.

Zanice Bond de Pérez received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Kansas (KU) in May 2012. While at Kansas she served as co-director of the Shifting Borders of Race and Identity Project, a KU/ Haskell Indian Nations University collaboration funded by the Ford Foundation which examines the intersections of African Americans and First Nations people. Zanice earned a B.S. in Communication from Ohio University and an M.A. in English from Tennessee State University where she was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. She also completed Gupton School of Mortuary Science and is a licensed funeral director and embalmer. She was a participant in the 1997 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute entitled “Performance and Text in Caribbean iterature” at the University of Puerto Rico; and attended the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for a summer session which examined the military dictatorship’s impact on the arts. Her current research interests include immigration history, 20th Century African-American literature, Afra-Latina literature, and critical race theory. Two of her poems were included in the anthology, Dark Eros published by St. Martin’s Press in 1997.

Zuzanna Wisniewska became fascinated with U.S. history after immigrating to Washington State in 2008 from Poland. As a student at the University of Washington, Zuzanna had the opportunity to study under Professor Quintard Taylor, Founder of BlackPast.org, and contribute multiple biographical entries of prominent African American figures to the site. Zuzanna graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Minor in Diversity. She is pursuing her J.D. at the Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law with an interest in the intersections of law and history.

Émile Drousie is a French exchange student at the University of Washington, Seattle. He was born in Toulouse, France’s fourth biggest city, and moved to Paris in 2015 where he began attending Sciences Po. There, he studied social sciences with an emphasis on political science and international relations. Back to France, he will start a master’s degree in International Security.