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Officer Biographies
Elizabeth Clark-Lewis is a specialist in twentieth century history and currently the Director of the Public History program at Howard University. Dr. Clark-Lewis is the former Director of the Graduate Program in History at Howard University and has taught at Penn State University, George Washington University, and Northern Virginia Community College. Currently she serves on the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History and she is a founding member of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Association. Professor Clark-Lewis' publications include First Freed: Washington, D.C., in the Emancipation Era (Howard Press, 2002), Living In, Living Out: African American Women and the Great Migration (Smithsonian Press, 1994), and This Work Had A' End (Duke/Memphis State, 1985). She is a co-author of Northern Virginia Community College: An Oral History (1987) and the co-producer of “Freedom Bags," an oral history-based television documentary. Freedom Bags received the Oscar Micheaux Best Documentary Award, the American Association of University Women Scholars’ Award, and the National Education Association’s ‘Golden Apple’ award. Her articles are included in volumes published by Cornell University Press, Duke Press, D.C. Heath, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society and the National Genealogical Society.
Ida E. Jones is the senior manuscript librarian at the Moorland Spingarn Research Center on the campus of Howard University. She earned her doctorate in history from Howard University in 2001 and her BA in journalism from Howard University in 1992. Dr. Joness general research interest involves the African experience in America. However, her specialized focus is African American religion and public history with an emphasis on archives. She has served on several boards such as the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for Washington, D.C. and the ASALH executive council. She is the author of numerous encyclopedia entries and journal articles. Currently she working on a Christocentric biography of Kelly Miller.
Robyn C. Spencer is Assistant Professor of History at the Lehman College (CUNY), received her PhD in History from Columbia University in 2001. Her research specializations are African American Social Protest Movements, South African History and African American Women. She has received several grants and fellowships for her work, most recently being awarded a post doctoral fellowship at the Center for African American Urban Studies and the Economy at Carnegie Mellon University for academic year 2003-2004. She has written on Gender and Black Power, and on the International Impact of the Black Panther Party. Dr. Spencer is currently revising a book manuscript entitled, Repression Breeds Resistance: The Rise and Fall of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, 1966-1982, for publication. Her future research will explore how participation in the anti-war movement forged an anti-imperialist consciousness among working class blacks. In many ways, it continues her emphasis on exploring overlapping and intersecting boundaries between social protest movements.
Debra Newman Ham is a Professor of History at Morgan State University, served from 1986 to 1995 as the Specialist in Afro-American History and Culture in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, and from 1972 to 1986 as an archivist and Black History Specialist at the National Archives. Dr. Ham worked as the guest curator of a major Library of Congress exhibit entitled "African American Odyssey: Quest for Full Citizenship," and as the editor of the exhibit catalog of the same name (1998). She is the senior author and editor of The African-American Mosaic: A Guide to Black History Resources in the Library of Congress(1993) and the author of Black History: A Guide to Civilian Records in the National Archives(1984). She also has written a number of articles including “Government Documents,’’ in the Harvard Guide to African-American History (2001), "Jesus and Justice: Nannie Helen Burroughs and the Struggle for Civil Rights," in Humanity and Society (1988); "The Propaganda and the Truth: Black Women and World War II," in Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women in the Military (1986) and "Black Women Workers in the Twentieth Century," in Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women (1986).
Janet Sims-Wood is the Ass't Chief Librarian for Reference/Reader Services at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. She is Vice President of Membership for the Association for the Study of African American Life & History (ASALH). She is a life member of ASALH and serves as National Vice President/Membership Chair. She co-edited the 2004 Learning Resources Manual for ASALH on Brown v Board of Education. Dr. Sims-Wood has served as Secretary of ABWH and as editor of the ABWH newsletter, Truth.
Stephanie Y. Evans is Assistant Professor in African American Studies and Women’s Studies at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She is the author of Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History. In 2003, she received her Ph.D. in Afro American Studies with a concentration in History and Politics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and in 2002 earned a Master’s Degree in the same field. Also in 2002, she completed the Graduate Certificate Program in Advanced Feminist Studies.
Abena Lewis-Mhoon is Assistant Professor of Public History at Coppin State University. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Howard University, holds an MA in Public History and a Ph.D. in United States History. Dr. Lewis-Mhoon's museum exhibits and publications include: "A Stitch in Time: An Introduction to African Americans in the Fashion Industry, 1800-2000" (The Black Fashion Museum); "Dress and the Civil Rights Movement" (The Negro History Bulletin); "America on the Move" (National Museum of American History); “Women and Work” (Smithsonian Institution); and “Women in Washington, D.C. History” (District of Columbia City Museum).
Amrita Chakrabarti Myers is Assistant Professor of History at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. She earned her B. A. in Classics and History from the University of Alberta in 1993 and an M. A. in American History from the same institution in 1995. An article based on her Master’s thesis, “Sisters in Arms: Slave Women and Resistance in the Antebellum South,” was published in the journal Past Imperfect in 1996. Dr. Myers earned her doctorate in African-American History from Rutgers University in 2004. Her dissertation, “Negotiating Women: Black Women and the Politics of Freedom in Charleston, South Carolina, 1790-1860,” unraveled the complex stories of the lives of Charleston’s free women of color. An article based on that work was recently accepted for publication. Entitled, “An Existence Both Contested and Constrained: The Lives of Charleston’s Free Black Women, 1790-1860,” this piece will appear as a chapter in Marjorie Spruill’s forthcoming edited collection from University of Georgia Press entitled, South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times.
Sonya Ramey is an Assistant Professor of African American History at the University of Texas at Arlington. She received her Ph.D. in United States History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in December, 2000. Her manuscript, We Fought Back by Doing a Good Job: African American Female Public School Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, 1880s-1980s is under contract with the University of Illinois Press. This work examines the history of African American education in Nashville, Tennessee, from the perspective of African American female public school teachers. She has also received numerous fellowships and awards including, the Patricia Roberts Harris Fellowship in History and the Spencer Foundation Pre-dissertation Fellowship in Education and the Faculty/Independent Scholar Research Fellowship from Tulane University.
Linda M. Perkins is Associate Professor and Director of Applied Women’s Studies at the Claremont Graduate University. Her primary areas of research are on the history of African American women’s higher education, the education of African Americans in elite institutions and the history of talent identification programs for African Americans students. She has served as Vice President of Division F (History and Historiography) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and has also served as a member of the Executive Council of AERA. She is currently on the editorial boards of the History of Education Quarterly and the Review of African American Education Her publications include Fanny Jackson Coppin and the Institute for Colored Youth, 1837-1902 (1987) and “The African American Female Elite: The Early History of African American Women in the Seven Sister Colleges, 1880-1960” in the Harvard Educational Review (Winter 1997). Professor Perkins was on the National Planning Committee for the 50th Anniversary Commemoration of the Brown v. Board of Education at New York University and taught a course on Brown in fall of 2004. She organized a national conference of the Impact of the Brown v. Board of Education and the 1964 Civil Rights Act on Race and Higher Education Conference at The Claremont Colleges that convened in February of 2005.
Niera Marshall is a Ph.D. Candidate in African Diaspora History at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. She earned her B. A. in History from Florida A&M University in 2001 and a M. A. from Indiana University in 2002. Her dissertation is entitled “Female Fugitives: Enslaved Women’s Resistance in Antebellum South Carolina and Georgia.” She has received fellowships and awards including the Five College Fellowship in History from Mount Holyoke College, the Chancellor’s Fellowship from Indiana University, and the Drusilla Dungee Houston Memorial Award from the Association of Black Women Historians.
Rose C. Thevenin, Associate Professor of History at Florida Memorial University, received her PhD from Michigan State University. She is the Co-Chair of the Planning Committee of the annual Florida State of Black Studies Conference and the Miami Consortium of Colleges and Universities. She was the 2003 and 2004 Scholar of the Year in the Division of Social Sciences at Florida Memorial College. She has received numerous awards, scholarships and fellowships from Michigan State University, State University College at Buffalo, honorary societies and from her sorority Zeta Phi Beta Inc. for her scholarship and community service.
Marshanda Smith is a Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Black History at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. She began her undergraduate studies as a Computer Science major and has earned two B. A. Degrees from Michigan State University in Interdisciplinary Humanities and History and a Masters Degree in African American History. She is a former executive board member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). She holds life memberships in ASALH and the Association of Black Women Historians.
