Online Forum: The Life, Legacy, and Activism of Queen Mother Audley Moore
Audley Moore (Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America).
February 25 – March 1
Black Perspectives, the award-winning blog of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), is hosting an online forum on Queen Mother Audley Moore with essays from contributors to the special issue of Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International on “The Life, Legacy, and Activism of Queen Mother Audley Moore.” Edited by Ashley D. Farmer and Erik S. McDuffie, the special issue centers on Moore, her activism, and her ideas in conversation with the larger developments of the twentieth century Black freedom struggle. The online forum begins on Monday, February 25 and concludes on Friday, March 1. It will feature essays from Keisha N. Blain, Ashley D. Farmer, Shafeah M’Balia, Erik S. McDuffie, and Akinyele Umoja.
During the week of the online forum, Black Perspectives will publish new blog posts every day at 5:30AM EST. Please follow Black Perspectives (@BlkPerspectives) and AAIHS (@AAIHS) on Twitter; like AAIHS on Facebook; or subscribe to our blog for updates. By subscribing to Black Perspectives, each new post will automatically be delivered to your inbox during the week of the forum.
About the Participants
Keisha N. Blain is an award-winning historian of the 20th century United States with broad interdisciplinary interests and specializations in African American History, the modern African Diaspora, and Women’s and Gender Studies. She completed a PhD in History at Princeton University and currently teaches history at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests include Black internationalism, radical politics, and global feminisms. She is the author of Set the World On Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and co-editor of To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (University of Illinois Press, 2019); New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (Northwestern University Press, 2018) and Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism and Racial Violence (University of Georgia Press, 2016). Her work has been published in several academic journals such as the Journal of Social History and Souls; and popular outlets including the Huffington Post, The Washington Post, and The Feminist Wire. She is the current president of the African American Intellectual History Society and the Editor in Chief of The North Star. Follow her on Twitter @KeishaBlain.
Ashley D. Farmer is a historian of black women’s history, intellectual history, and radical politics. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Departments of History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas-Austin. She is the author of Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era (UNC Press, 2017) and co-editor of New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition. Her scholarship has appeared in numerous venues including The Black Scholar and The Journal of African American History. She has also contributed to popular outlets like The Independent, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Public Books, and the History Channel. She is also the Co-Editor of the Black Power Series with Ibram X. Kendi, published with NYU Press. Follow her on Twitter @drashleyfarmer.
Shafeah M’Balia is a lifelong activist in the Black Liberation Movement beginning in high school in Roosevelt, Long Island, New York, deeply influenced by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party. She was a member of the African People’s Party. Since 1986, she has been a member of the North Carolina-based Black Workers for Justice, functioning in its women’s commission, and past managing editor of its Justice Speaks newspaper. She currently serves as editor of its newsletter Justice Speaks J-Zine E-Newsletter, the Women’s Commission and developing Communiversity, among other assignments. She is a member of Muslims for Social Justice and the Imam Jamil Action Network. She lives in Savannah, Georgia.
Erik S. McDuffie is an Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His research and teaching interests include the African diaspora, the Midwest, black feminism,black queer theory, black radicalism, urban history, and black masculinity. He is the author of Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). The book won the 2012 Wesley-Logan Prize from the American Historical Association and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, as well as the 2011 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. He is also the author of several scholarly articles and essays published in African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal; African Identities; American Communist History; Biography; Journal of African American History; Journal of West African History; Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International Women of Color; Radical History Review; Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society; Women, Families, and Children of Color among other journals and edited volumes. Currently, he is working on a new book, tentatively titled Garveyism in the Diasporic Midwest: The American Heartland and Global Black Freedom, 1920-80. Drawing from original research conducted in Canada, Ghana, Grenada, Jamaica, Liberia, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States, the book is the first to establish the importance of the Midwest to twentieth-century black transnational politics and to demonstrate vibrant political exchanges between the heartland and African world through Garveyism. Follow him on Twitter @ErikSMcDuffie.
Akinyele Umoja is a Professor and the Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University. Umoja is the author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance and the Mississippi Freedom Movement, named the 2014 Anna Julia Cooper/ C.L.R. James Award for the best book in Africana Studies by the National Council of Black Studies. It also the recipient of the 2014 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature. His research has also been featured in Souls, The Journal of Black Studies, New Political Science, The International Journal of Africana Studies, The Black Scholar, and the Radical History Review. Umoja’s writing appears in several anthologies including 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, and Malcolm X: A Historical Reader edited by James Conyers and Andrew Smallwood. He is also co-editor of the Black Power Encyclopedia, scheduled for a June 2018 release. Umoja is also the editor of a special issue of The Black Scholar on the legacy of his comrade, revolutionary activist, attorney, and elected official, the Honorable Chokwe Lumumba. Follow him on Twitter @BabaAk.