Early Upload: The Black Historian Index
Hey! You may have noticed a theme in my recent content:
How To Create Your Own Personal Curriculum
Building A Better Personal Library
Black Literature By The Decade
In this guide, I want to serve two purposes. I want to give Black American historians their flowers. In a world of generative AI and anti-intellectualism, we must hold them near and dear. Also, I hope that this collection of over 60 historians will continue my mission encouraging people to seek knowledge and learn about the world around them. This list isn't exhaustive (there could be updates in the future, such as global Black history), but for now it's a good mix of American historians who have influenced me, or been influential to the academics I frequently reference. It will not be available on my website or Instagram for a week or so.
The collection is broken up chronologically from Pre-Antebellum through the 2010s, showing which historians made an impact at the time or began publishing. There are also four bonus categories: Scholars of Black Women's History, Black Food History, Black LGBT History, and Black Regional History.
At every new iteration of slavery's interpretation (and why the South seceded), the predominant white historians have justified American chattel slavery, and later, the dismantling of Reconstruction.
The Lost Cause Ideology encouraged Southern descendants to feel pride for the Confederacy and cry about states' rights
The Dunning School of Thought, a viewpoint about Reconstruction, supported enslavers and Confederates, paternalism of the enslaved, and the rejection of civil rights for Black people.
Economic justifications of slavery in the 1970s, etc
MAGA, modern declarations that Black people were better off eslaved, etc
When paired with propaganda about Black people and history in popular media and even household products, the battle for Black American History-- and fighting back against these narratives at every step-- has been important. Dr. Carter G Woodson did not feel welcome in white institutions and historical societies. For instance, though he was a dues-paying member of the American Historical Association, he was not allowed to attend conventions. Knowing that Black historians of the future needed to establish a foundation of study, he got to work.
The 1947 publication of Dr. John Hope Franklin's From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (and its eventual sale of three million copies) was the result of vigorous research following the establishment of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which began publishing its long-running journal the following year. Contributors would include thinkers like Dr. Charles H. Wesley and Franklin. Another person of note is Dr. Marion Thompson Wright, who became the first Black woman to earn a PhD in history in 1940. Her dissertation was The Education of Negroes in New Jersey, which would later be used by NAACP lawyers in Brown v. Board of Education. She later became a professor at Howard University and a member of the NAACP.
Slowly but surely, more Black history lovers enrolled in higher education, though some, like John Henrik Clarke, were self-educated. Others, like editor and journalist Lerone Bennett, wanted to make Black history accessible to the masses.
Also in the 50s and 60s, there was a resurgence of Lost Cause rhetoric in the wake of Brown vs Board of Education striking down 'state's rights' (to be racist). As the Civil Rights Movement gave way to unrest and the Black Power Movement, black students at universities demanded their own departments and courses.
The 1967 publication of William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner was heavily criticized by Black historians and intellectuals. John Henrik Clarke edited William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond in 1969. Black historians, like Black students and Black power protesters, were upsetting the status quo. As Black Studies programs formed, historiography methods became debated and more important. For instance, Dr. John W. Blassingame, writer of 1972's powerful The Slave Community: Plantation Life and The Antebellum South, advised on how to use the Works Progress Administration Enslaved Narratives (mostly recorded by white people), as they could present a "simplistic and distorted view" of plantation life. While this was controversial at the time, this came to be the prevailing view.
The 70s saw the rise of Black historians using Black folklore and oral history, statistical data, and archaeological records, plus uncovering untold stories of resistance from slavery. Afrocentricity, feminism, and alternative living also expanded the field of historical study as the 1977 television adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots created lifelong Black history fanatics (like my 5-year-old mother). Additionally, there was the 1971 publication of Nathan Huggins' Harlem Renaissance. More scholars, books, and adaptations of distinctly Black American history would follow.
The historical range of interest expanded in the 80s, as college enrollment soared and Black Studies programs grew. In 1983, top Black historians gathered at a conference on the Study and Teaching of Afro-American History at Purdue University.
In the 90s, the stratification of Black interests and priorities in general society was reflected in the diversity of historical study. Plus, the continued shift of Black culture from insulated to inclusive and trendy meant Black Studies programs were better funded -- but to some, losing their radical edge. In 2000's Black Studies in The New Millennium, Sundiata Keita Cha-Ju warned that scholars needed to incorporate more sociological study on poverty and systemic issues into their analysis of the Black community, rather than focusing extensively on cultural expression.
Historical study in the 2000s was pronounced because a slew of Black PhDs were getting book deals from academic presses, joining university staff, and even blogging - making their ideas more accessible. The election of Barack Obama to the presidency meant more invitations from media outlets before and after to offer commentary. The role of women in historiography was also examined closely by Dr. Leslie Alexander in her 2004 article The Challenge of Race: Rethinking the Position of Black Women in the Field of History. She wrote, "[In the 80s], Black scholars issued a new challenge, one that forced historians to move beyond the contributionist model. This movement demanded a broader understanding of the role of race and class in the lives of women of color and urged women's studies (and the women's movement) to become more expansive in their interpretations." This was paying off by the 2000s.
The 2010s brought a more aggressively critical lens to Black history, in the aftermath of police brutality and the election of Donald Trump. LGBT history became a more publicized field of study, showing how much Black Studies and history had grown. In 2016, Dr. Adam Green reflected on the future of Black Historians in the American Historical Association journal (the same organization that banned Woodson from attending its conventions a century prior, though he was a dues-paying member). He wrote, "A cornerstone concern of recent research has been to foreground the diversity of African American identity and motive—to approach black people as richly constituted through difference, friction, and contradiction—rather than to make idealized appeals to lockstep unity."
Below are four bonus categories of historians.
Who is your favorite Black American historian? Which Black American Historian should I include in a future update of the index? Let me know in the comments!
Some Additional Reading
https://archive.org/details/fromslaverytofre0000fran_t9o4/page/n5/mode/2up
https://religiondispatches.org/2025/04/24/i-dont-do-horror-ryan-coogler
https://librarycompany.org/geniusoffreedom/histories-and-historiographies/
https://www.st-annes.ox.ac.uk/life-here/library/blog/merze-tate/
https://s-usih.org/2014/03/reconstruction-discourse-the-late-1960s-and-the-legacy-of-the-dunning-school/
https://www.aaihs.org/black-historians-race-and-the-historical-profession/
https://dsps.lib.uiowa.edu/history-of-history-at-iowa/african-american-history-and-historians/
https://history.illinois.edu/news/2026-02-23/remembering-kevin-mumford
https://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/souls/vol2no3/vol2num3art4.pdf