The Institute for Social Justice and Race Relations @ COFO,
Jackson State University Department of History & Philosophy,
Department of English & Modern Foreign Languages, and Gallery 1
The JSU Reading Community will engage in conversation with Akinyele Umoja,
author of
We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement"
Akinyele Umoja is an Associate Professor and the Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University. He teaches courses on the history of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements and other Black political and social movements.
He completed his undergraduate education at California State University Los Angeles, and graduating with a B.A. in Afro-American Studies in 1986 and achieved his secondary teaching credential through courses at Morris Brown College and finally Georgia State University in 1987. He went to graduate school at Emory University in Atlanta where he received his M.A. and PhD in American Studies with a concentration in African-American Studies.
Professor Umoja is the author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance and the Mississippi Freedom Movement (New York University, 2013). We Will We Shoot Back received the annual Anna Julia Cooper/ C.L.R. James Award from the National Council of Black Studies (NCBS) for the best book in Africana Studies in 2014. Dr. Umoja’s research has been featured in several scholarly publications: Souls, The Journal of Black Studies, New Political Science, The International Journal of Africana Studies, The Black Scholar, Radical History Review and Socialism and Democracy. Umoja was one of the contributors to Blackwell Companion on African-American History, edited by Alton Hornsby; The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, edited by Charles E. Jones; and Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party, edited by Kathleen Cleaver and George Katisaficus.
Dr. Umoja is also active in the promotion and development of the field of Black/ Africana Studies. Umoja was the recipient of the National Council of Black Studies’ (NCBS) President Award for outstanding contribution to the discipline of African-American Studies. He currently serves as Board member of NCBS) AND is the chair of the NCBS Civic Engagement committee, which supports Black Studies departments’ community involvement projects. Umoja also serves on the editorial board of the historic journal The Black Scholar.
Two professional academic organizations, the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (1998) and the National Council of Black Studies (2008) have acknowledged Dr. Umoja’s work in the community. Professor Umoja is a human rights activist. He is a co-founder of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and active in social justice issues, particularly police and governmental misconduct. He has worked in solidarity with the fight for democracy and social justice in Guyana and in Haiti. He is also the co-founder of Atlanta’s annual Malcolm X Festival, which is now in its 24th year.
Join us on Friday, February 27, 2015 at 12:noon at the Fannie Lou Hamer Institute @ COFO located at: 1017 John R. Lynch Street, Jackson, MS 39217
For more information, please contact us: 601-979-1563 or 601-979-4348 or email: Hamer.Institute@jsums.edu
