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- Detailed Information
Jeanne Theoharis
Distinguished Professor
Political Science
Location: 3417 James Hall
Phone: 718.951.5000 x1751
Fax: 718.951.4833
Email:
Jeanne Theoharis is the author or co-author of eleven books and numerous articles on the civil rights and Black Power movements and the contemporary politics of race in the United States. Her biography The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks won a 2014 NAACP Image Award and the Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. The book was turned into a documentary directed by Johanna Hamilton and Yoruba Richen and executive produced by Soledad O'Brien now streaming on Peacock where she served as a consulting producer. The documentary was awarded a 2023 Peabody Award and a Television Academy Honor Award. Her book A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History won the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize for Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, The Nation, The Atlantic, the Intercept, the Boston Review & the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Education:
Ph.D., University of Michigan - Ann Arbor - 1996 (American Studies)
A.B., Harvard University - 1991 (Afro-American Studies)
Areas of Expertise:
20th-century African American history, civil rights and Black Power, the contemporary politics of race and gender, social policy and urban studies, post-9/11 racial politics and civil liberties
Books and Publications
Julian Bond's Time to Teach: A History of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, Beacon Press. (Books and Publications: Book (Edited)) 2021
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks Young Reader's Edition co-adapted with Brandy Colbert, Beacon Press (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2021
"Historians and the Black Freedom Struggle in the North" Black Perspectives, April 1, 2019. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2019
"The true crime in higher education: How we've abandoned public universities like CUNY" with Alan Aja and Joseph Entin, New York Daily News. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2019
"What King Said About Northern Liberalism" New York Times, January 20, 2019. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2019
The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North (NYU Press, 2019) edited by Brian Purnell and Jeanne Theoharis with Komozi Woodard (Books and Publications: Book (Edited)) 2019
"A National Problem" in Fifty Years Since MLK, special issue, Boston Review. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2018
"Coretta Scott King and the Civil-Rights Movement's Hidden Women" The Atlantic, King Issue.
(Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2018
"We remember how Martin Luther King Jr. revolutionized the South. But we can't forget his struggles in the North" Washington Post, April 4, 2018. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2018
A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History. Beacon Press. (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2018
"How New York City Became the Capitol of the Jim Crow North" with Brian Purnell, Washington Post, August 23, 2017. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2017
Co-edited a special forum of the Boston Review on "Islam on Trial" and co-authored the opening piece with Amna Akbar (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2017
Co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Urban History on "Rethinking Boston's Busing Crisis" and co-authored the Introduction with Matthew Delmont (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2017
"I Feel Like a Despised Insect": Coming of Age Under Surveillance in New York (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2016
"Torture of a Student," in Hell is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement edited by Jean Casella, James Ridgeway, and Sarah Shourd (New York: New Press, 2016). (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2016
MLK Would Never Shut Down a Freeway and 6 Other Myths of the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter, The Root (June 15, 2016). (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2016
Roundtable on Rhonda Williams' Concrete Demands, Journal of Civil and Human Rights 1:2 (Winter 2016). (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2016
The Travesty of Starving Our Best Public Universities, The Chronicle Review (June 6, 2016). (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2016
"Beyond the Bus: Rosa Parks' Lifelong Struggle for Justice" featured article, Library of Congress Magazine, March/April, on the opening of the Rosa Parks Collection at the Library of Congress. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2015
"Fifty Years We Still Haven?t Learned from Watts" New York Times (August 11, 2015). (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2015
"Get Reintroduced to Rosa Parks As a New Archive Reveals the Woman Behind the Boycott" Smithsonian Magazine (December 2015). (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2015
"How History Got Rosa Parks Wrong?" Washington Post (December 1, 2015). (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2015
"Looking Back on the Bus Boycott" Library of Congress blog (December 1, 2015). (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2015
"Rosa Parks Final Lesson: Never Stop Fighting." MSNBC. March 9. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2015
"Rosa Parks Wasn?t Meek, Passive or Naive and 7 Other Things You Probably Didn?t Know About Her" with Say Burgin, The Nation (December 1, 2015). (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2015
"What I Learned from Julian Bond" The Nation (August 17, 2015). (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2015
"10 Ways to Be Like Martin Luther King After Ferguson." MSNBC. Dec. 3. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2014
"A Fuller Tribute to Rosa Parks." The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 4. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2014
"The Arc of Justice Runs Through Ferguson." MSNBC. Aug. 26. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2014
"10 Things You Didn't Know About Rosa Parks." Huffington Post, Feb. 4. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2013
"Guantanamo in New York City: Introduction to New Series 'America After 9/11.'" The Nation, Oct. 14. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2013
"Rosa Parks Stamp on American History." The Root, Feb. 4. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2013
"Who Is the Target of NSA Surveillance?" The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 17. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2013
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. Beacon Press. (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2013
Theoharis, Jeanne and Marwa Amer. "Honoring Rosa Parks Requires More Than a Statue." The Nation, Feb. 28. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2013
Theoharis, Jeanne and Laura Rovner. "Preferring Order to Justice." American University Law Review 61.5. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2012
Theoharis, Jeanne and Saskia Sassen. "A Human Rights Court Gives Torture a Green Light." Nation, Oct. 15. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2012
"Accidental Matriarchs and Beautiful Helpmates: Gender and the Memorialization of the Civil Rights Movement." Civil Rights From the Ground Up: Local Studies, a National Movement. Ed. Emilye Crosby. University of Georgia Press. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2011
"My Student, the 'Terrorist.'" The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 8. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2011
Theoharis, Jeanne and Julian Bond. "Why Don't Scholars Have Access to Rosa Parks's Archives?" Washington Post, Aug. 29. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2011
"Hidden in Plain Sight: Southern Exceptionalism and the Civil Rights Movement in the North." The End of the South? Integrating the Modern South and the Nation. Eds. Matthew Lassiter and Joe Crespino. Oxford University Press. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2010
"W-A-L-K-O-U-T: High School Students and the Development of Black and Brown Power in Los Angeles." Neighborhood Rebels: Black Power at the Local Level. Ed. Peniel Joseph. Palgrave Macmillan. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2010
Featured review of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North, by Thomas Sugrue. American Historical Review. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2010
"Guantanamo at Home." The Nation, April 20. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2009
Alonso, Gaston, Noel Anderson, Celina Su and Jeanne Theoharis. School Sucks: When Students Talk Back to a Segregated Nation. New York University Press. (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2009
Theoharis, Jeanne, Komozi Woodard and Dayo Gore. Want to Start a Revolution: Women in the Black Revolt. New York University Press. (Books and Publications: Book (Edited)) 2009
Theoharis, Jeanne and Alejandra Marchevsky. "Dropped From the Rolls: Mexican Immigrants, Race and Rights in the Era of Welfare Reform." Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare. Special issue on "Beyond the Numbers: How the Lived Experiences of Women Challenge the 'Success' of Welfare Reform." (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2008
"From the Stone the Builders Rejected: Toward a New Civil Rights Historiography," review essay of To Stand and Fight, by Martha Biondi; Black Is a Country, by Nikhil Pal Singh; and Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, by Kenneth. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2007
Review of Black Liberation in the Midwest: The Struggle in St. Louis, Missouri, 1964-1970, by Kenneth S. Jolly. Journal of American History June. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2007
"'Alabama on Avalon': Rethinking the Watts Uprising and the Character of Black Protest in Los Angeles." Black Power Studies: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era. Ed. Peniel Joseph. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2006
"Black Freedom Studies: Re-imagining and Redefining the Fundamentals." History Compass. Blackwell Publishing. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2006
"New Direction in Black Freedom Studies." History Compass. London: Blackwell. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2006
"There Are No Accidents: On the Funerals of Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King." First of the Month. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2006
Marchevsky, Alejandra and Jeanne Theoharis. Not Working: Latina Immigrants, Low-wage Jobs and the Failure of Welfare Reform, an interdisciplinary study of immigrants and welfare reform that blends history, ethnography and political economy. New York University Press. (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2006
Review of More Than One Struggle, by Jack Dougherty. American Historical Review April. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2006
Review of Welfare Warriors, by Premilla Nadasen. Journal of American History December. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2005
Theoharis, Jeanne and Komozi Woodard. Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in America, a collection of essays on local civil rights organizing throughout the nation. New York: New York University Press. (Books and Publications: Book (Edited)) 2005
"It's Not the Bus, It's Us: Rethinking Boston's School Desegregation and the Northern Civil Rights Movement." Proceedings of the International Conference on Focusing the Vietnam Era: Contemporary Views of American Literature and Culture in the Great Sixties. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2003
Theoharis, Jeanne and Komozi Woodard. Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside of the South, 1940-1980, a collection of essays on the Northern civil rights movement. Palgrave Macmillan. (Books and Publications: Book (Edited)) 2003
Theoharis, Jeanne and Athan Theoharis. These Yet to Be United States: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in America Since 1945. Harcourt Brace/Thomson Publishers. (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2002
'"We Saved the City': Black Struggles for Educational Equality in Boston, 1960-1976." Radical History Review. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2001
Theoharis, Jeanne and Alejandra Marchevsky. "Welfare Reform, Globalization and the Racialization of Entitlement." American Studies. Special double issue on "Globalization, Transnationalism and the End of the American Century." Summer/Fall. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2000
Awards, Honors and Fellowships
2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize for Nonfiction (Awards and Honors) 2018
Co-director, NEH Summer Faculty Seminar "Rethinking Black Freedom Studies from the Jim Crow North to the Jim Crow West," June 15-26. (Grants and Fellowships) 2015
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Biography/Autobiography. (Awards and Honors) 2014
Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013, for The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. (Awards and Honors) 2013
Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians, for The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. (Awards and Honors) 2013
American Association of University Women American Fellowship, 2009-10. (Grants and Fellowships) 2010
Tow Faculty Research Travel Award. (Grants and Fellowships) 2009
Tow Travel Fellowship. (Grants and Fellowships) 2006
Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship. One-year fellow at California State University, Los Angeles, through the Rockefeller program "Becoming and Belonging: The Alchemy of Identity in the Multinational Metropolis." 2003-04. (Grants and Fellowships) 2003
Center for the Humanities "Writing Lives" Mellon Fellowship, 2002-03. (Grants and Fellowships) 2002
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship. (Grants and Fellowships) 2002
Radcliffe Institute of Study Research Grant, to support research on Boston civil rights activists at the Schlesinger Library for Research on Women at Harvard University. (Grants and Fellowships) 2002
Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums
2018 Gibbs Lecture at North Carolina A&T (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2019
American Library Association MLK Sunrise Speaker, January 28, 2019. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2019
American Constitution Society Plenary on Martin Luther King, annual conference, June 9, 2018 (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2018
Brooklyn Historical Society--Invited Talk on my book A More Beautiful and Terrible History (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2018
Brooklyn Public Library--Talk on Rosa Parks (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2018
Harvard Law School--Invited Talk on my book A More Beautiful and Terrible History (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2018
University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal, "Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights Movement and the Aesthetics of Protest" Conference Keynote, November 24, 2018 (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2018
University of Michigan Distinguished Alumni Bicentennial Speaker (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2017
First Lady Chirlane McCray's "Reimagining Black History through Art, African American History and the Fierce Urgency of Now" event at Gracie Mansion (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
Julian Bond Memorial Symposium, University of Virginia, October 21, 2016. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
March on Washington Film Festival--Smithsonian Museum of American History (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
Seward House Museum featured lecture on the Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
Women's History Month Speaker sponsored by the Special Observance's Committee of the NEA, NEH, and President's Committee on Arts and Humanities (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
"A Life History of Being Rebellious: Rosa Parks and the Black Power Movement." Annual Guest Lecture for the Postdoctoral Fellowship in African-American Studies, Case Western Reserve University. Cleveland, April. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011
"Made in America: King's Dream in Today's Economy." A program in honor of Martin Luther King Day, sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum and WNYC, Jan. 15. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011
"Our Schools Suck: Young People Talk Back to a Segregated Nation." Landscape of Urban Education lecture series. Syracuse University. March. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011
"The State of Civil Rights History." Rockland Community College. Suffern, N.Y., February. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011
"Working for Change: African American Women's Efforts to Remedy Social Injustice, 1880s-1960s" commentator. Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting. New York, March. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2008
"A Mass Movement for Civil Rights: The Struggle for Desegregation and Educational Equity in the Urban North." Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Symposium Lecture Series on "The Current Status of Civil Rights Research and Pedagogy." Jackson State University. Jackson, Miss., October. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
"In the Aftermath of Welfare Reform." Yeshiva University Wurzweiler School of Social Work 50th Anniversary Conference. May. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007
"Rethinking the Racial Politics of New Deal Citizenship, Public Policy and Social Welfare" symposium convenor and commentator. Sarah Lawrence College. Bronxville, N.Y., April. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2007
Commentator on Tom Sugrue's presentation "Jim Crow's Last Stand: The Unfinished Struggle for Civil Rights in the North." 20th Century American Politics and Society Workshop. Columbia University. New York, September. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2007
"Gender, Leadership and Local Movements" and "Local Studies: What Do They Tell Us? Why Do They Matter." Local Studies, a National Movement: Toward a Historiography of the Black Freedom Movement. SUNY Geneseo. March. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2006
"New Black Power Studies." University of Michigan Metropolitan History Seminar. September. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2006
"Not the Usual Suspects: Rethinking the Black Power Movement" chairwoman and commentator. Race, Roots, and Resistance: Revisiting the Legacies of Black Power Conference. University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. April. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2006
"Struggles for Racial Justice in California Public Schools." Los Angeles as Trans-National Crossroads: New Directions in Community Activism and Cultural Studies. California State University, Los Angeles. June. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2006
"The Northern Civil Rights Movement." NEH Teaching American History Civil Rights Group. Boston, June. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2006
Theoharis, Jeanne and Alejandra Marchevsky. "Not Working: Welfare Reform and the Manufacturing of a Low-wage Labor Force." UCLA Labor Center. June. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2006
Theoharis, Jeanne and Alejandra Marchevsky. "Tough Love in L.A. County: Mexican Immigrants and the Failure of Welfare-to-Work." American Studies Association Annual Conference. Oakland, Calif., October. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2006
"'Alabama on Avalon': Rethinking the Metaphor of the Watts Riot and Northern Urban Protest." Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Buffalo, N.Y., October. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2005
"Black Freedom Studies." Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History Regional Conference. Amherst, Mass., April. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2005
"Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in America" chairwoman and commentator. American Studies Association Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C., November. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2005
"New Directions in the Study of Black Power." Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Buffalo, N.Y., October. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2005
"A Hailstorm in South Central: Urban Teenagers, Representation, and the Politics of Schooling." Rockefeller Humanities Colloquium. Los Angeles, June. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2004
"Alabama on Avalon: Rethinking the Historiography of the Watts Riot and Northern Urban Black Protest." Rockefeller Seminar Series. California State University, Los Angeles. April. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2004
Theoharis, Jeanne and Alejandra Marchevsky. "'I Wanted to Go to School, but They Sent Me to Job Club': How Welfare Reform Erodes Brown's Promise of Equity Through Education." Still Not Equal: Expanding Opportunity in Global Societies Conference. Patterson Research Institute of the United Negro College Fund. Washington, D.C., September. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2004
Theoharis, Jeanne and Alejandra Marchevsky. "Educational Austerity and Spectacle in the Era of Welfare Reform." Learning Conference. Havana, June. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2004
"'Every Means at Our Disposal': Ruth Batson and the Black Freedom Struggle in Boston, 1945-1980." Sisters in Struggle: Honoring Women Veterans of the Modern Civil Rights Movement. Sarah Lawrence College. Bronxville, N.Y., March. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2003
"Rethinking the Boston Busing Crisis: Elements of Civil Rights and Black Power." The Black Power Movement in Historical Perspective: Dialogues on Race and American Society. University of Connecticut, Storrs. November. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2003
"The Northern Civil Rights Movement." Fulbright Program. CUNY Graduate Center. New York, July. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2003
Theoharis, Jeanne and Alejandra Marchevsky. "Reauthorizing Welfare: Public Discourse Around the 2002 Vote." Law and Society Annual International Meeting. Vancouver, British Columbia, June. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2002
Theoharis, Jeanne and Alejandra Marchevsky. "Welfare Reform and the Racial Politics of Globalization." International Colloquium on the Border. La Paz, Mexico, February. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2001
Professional Leadership
Co-Curator, Conversations in Black Freedom Studies at the Schomburg Center of the NYPL, 2013-present (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2019
Chairwoman, "Northern Racial Liberalism Roundtable." American Studies Association Annual Conference. Philadelphia, October. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2007
