Black Women Speakers of Prominence

A special lecture by the niece of Legendary Author and Anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston.

About the featured speaker: 

Professor Lucy Anne Hurston, the niece of famed Anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, is a social scientist committed to the parallel discipline, "Sociology: the Study of Social Behavior Within and Between Groups." Lucy’s research is deeply connected to questions her aunt raised decades ago focused on race, ethnicity, and culture. Bringing these issues to the forefront in numerous arenas, Lucy explores the social world around her, centering, identifying, describing, and eventually solving social problems in her orbit.

As owner of Hurston Research LLC for over 23 years, Lucy has played a critical role in exploring and disseminating Zora's knowledge through her research. She also continues to advocate for social change and equity in her volunteer work which centers on survival support systems of food and housing. 

About the host:

Dr. Melanie R. Hill is Assistant Professor of English Literature, Music, Theology and American Studies at Rutgers—Newark, and Mellon Assistant Professor of Global Racial Justice and ISGRJ Named Term Chair. Dr. Hill's transdisciplinary research focuses on the intersections of literature,  music, and theology, covering such topics as Black feminism, womanist thought, and the element of the sermon in African American literature. With articles published on Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, and the sermon as sonic art in James Baldwin’s "The Amen Corner," Dr. Hill's forthcoming book, Colored Women Sittin’ on High: Womanist Sermonic Practice in Literature and Music, is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press (UNC Press). Colored Women Sittin' on High focuses on the ways in which Black women preachers in African American literature, music, and in the space of the pulpit counter social injustices through sermon and song.  She received her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania with graduate certificates in Africana Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. 

In addition to her scholarship, Dr. Hill is a Gospel Soul violinist who has performed at the White House on two occasions under the Obama administration, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Apollo Theater in New York, the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and for Pope Francis's Papal Mass during his historic visit to the United States.

The Black Women Leaders of Prominence Series: An Evening of Music and Social Justice Honoring Legendary Civil Rights Activist and Freedom Fighter Ruby Sales was held at Rutgers University-Newark on March 5, 2024. 

Ruby was greeted by a standing ovation and received special tributes from Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Senator Cory Booker.

Ruby is one of 50 civil rights leaders showcased by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. At the age of 17, she marched in the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965. She has worked as a human rights advocate in Washington, D.C., and across the south.

Sales is the founder and director of the Spirit House Project, and regularly speaks throughout the country about race, class, and reconciliation.

The event featured acclaimed poet, activist and artist Ursula Rucker, American actor and singer-songwriter Chaz Lamar Shepherd, and Dr. Melanie R. Hill, renowned Gospel Soul violinist, Assistant Professor of English Literature, Music, Theology and American Studies at Rutgers University—Newark and our ISGRJ Named Term Chair and Mellon Assistant Professor of Global Racial Justice.

Watch Senator Cory Booker's tribute to Ruby Sales here: 

R.A.G.E. Lab proudly presents
"Doing Black Feminism in Public"
A conversation with Roxane Gay and Brittney Cooper

The Rutgers Race and Gender Equity (R.A.G.E.) Lab launches its first signature initiative, “Black Feminism in the Public Sphere,” with a special event entitled “Doing Black Feminism in Public,” a conversation with Dr. Brittney Cooper, Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies and Principal Investigator of RAGE Lab and Dr. Roxane Gay, author of the New York Times bestselling books Bad Feminist and Hunger, and the current Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University.

About RAGE Lab: The Race and Gender Equity Lab is a multi-modal research incubator committed to pursuing feminist research questions related to the intellectual production and social thriving of Black women and girls.

Watch the livestream of the conversation here:

The AMESALL Distinguished Lecture Series presents

“The Subject of Woman’s Rights is Before the World”
Advancing Global Citizenship and Leadership Paradigms

by Professor Carole Boyce-Davies

Thursday, February 23, 2023
4:00 - 6:00pm
Rutgers Academic Building | West Wing | Rm. 2400 

15 Seminary Place , New Brunswick, NJ, 08901 (This event is in-person)

In 1901, Catherine McKenzie, a Black and women’s rights activist in Jamaica, asserted that “[T]he subject of “Woman’s Rights” is before the world …a subject which is here to stay, to be discussed, and to be settled.  It may be said to be the progeny of the nineteenth century; but it is to grow and develop into full maturity during the century upon which the world has just entered.” Here we have a fitting women’s rights counterpart to W. E. B. DuBois’s parallel assertion on the prominence and permanence of the color line made a year before, at the first Pan African Conference in 1900 in London, i.e. “The problem of the 20^th century is the problem of the color line” meaning that the problematics of race would be the issue dominating the 20^th century. The fact that we know only DuBois’s assertion speaks to the issues which describe how women’s rights are rarely represented in male supremacist world culture.  Retrospectively, we can just as easily see, through this lens, the 20^th century as one in which women’s rights were going to be centrally positioned and indeed they were. This presentation will address some of the contemporary manifestations which reposition women's rights to leadership. 

Featured Speaker:

Carole Boyce-Davies is the H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters and Professor of Africana Studies and Literatures in English at Cornell University. She is the author of the prize-wining Left of Karl Marx. The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (2008); the classic Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (1994); Caribbean Spaces. Escape Routes from Twilight Zones (2013) and a bi-lingual children’s story Walking/An Avan (2016/2017) in Haitian Kreyol and English. She is a past-president of the Caribbean Studies Association which organized under her leadership the first CSA Conference in Haiti in 2016. In addition to over a hundred essays, articles and book chapters, Dr. Boyce-Davies has also published thirteen critical editions on African, African Diaspora and Caribbean literature and culture including the 3-volume Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora (Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2008) and Claudia Jones Beyond Containment: Autobiographical Reflections, Poetry, Essays (2011) A member of the scientific committee for UNESCO’s updated General History of Africa, she edited the epistemological forum on “Global Blackness” for the African Diaspora volume. Her recently published book is Black Women’s Rights and the Circularities of Power (2022). 

The Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University-Newark hosted our first in-person signature event featuring Sheryll Cashin, Georgetown Professor of Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice and acclaimed author.

Professor Cashin discussed her most recent book "White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality," with David Troutt, Rutgers Law School Professor and Rutgers CLiME (Center for Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity) Director serving as the moderator. The event delivered an intimate and thought-provoking discussion of the critical issues related to housing, policing, schools, and transportation, showcasing how government created “ghettos” and affluent white space and entrenched a system of American residential caste that is the linchpin of US inequality.

Access the on-demand livestream recording of the conversation here:

Sheryll Cashin is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Civil Rights, and Social Justice at Georgetown and an acclaimed author of five books. She writes mainly about the U.S. struggle with racism and inequality. Professor Cashin’s books have been nominated for the C. Wright Mills Award, NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction, and an Editors’ Choice in the New York Times Book Review. A contributing editor for Politico Magazine, she has also written commentaries for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Salon, The Root, and other media. For her writing and advocacy, she was recently named by the Washingtonian Magazine as one DC’s Most Influential People. Cashin is also former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, a self-taught historian and memoirist, a daughter of civil rights agitators in Alabama, a sought-after speaker and a regular commentator on national radio, TV and podcasts.

David Dante Troutt is a Distinguished Professor of Law and Justice John J. Francis Scholar at Rutgers Law School-Newark where he also directs the Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME). He emphasizes using law and interdisciplinary study in order to understand structural inequality and systemic racism and to formulate legal and policy reform strategies. Troutt teaches tort law, intellectual property, civil rights and a multidisciplinary approach to racial and economic inequality (land use, civil rights, state and local government, housing and poverty law). Troutt is the author of four books: The Price of Paradise: The Costs of Inequality and a Vision for a More Equitable America (NYU Press), The Monkey Suit: Short Fiction on African Americans and Justice (The New Press), After the Fall: Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane Katrina (The New Press), and a novel, The Importance of Being Dangerous (Amistad/HarperCollins). In addition to many scholarly articles, he writes frequently on issues of law, race and inequality for a variety of national publications. A Harlemite relocated to New Jersey, Troutt is the proud father of two tremendous daughters.

With thanks to Rutgers University Libraries and the Media Productions by Continuing Studies (formerly iTV studio) for their support of this event.

On October 27, 2022 The Rutgers Graduate School of Education, Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, and School of Management and Labor Relations presented the Critical Race Theory in Education Lecture with Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings entitled “Debating What’s Debatable: Understanding the CRT/I Argument.”

Our first signature fall event of 2022 was a thought-provoking and insightful conversation on an important topic with Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, who is credited with introducing researchers and scholars in the field of education to CRT. Dr. Ladson-Billings is the Inaugural Distinguished Race and Social Justice in Education Scholar-in-Residence at Rutgers Graduate School of Education and the past president of the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

We were near capacity with our in-person audience at Rutgers University’s Busch Campus Student Center, and had several hundred watch the livestream for this signature event!

The Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice in partnership with the Office of the Chancellor-Provost at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Rutgers University Libraries proudly presented:   

"To Turn the Light of Truth Upon Them" 

Black Women, Justice, and the Power of the Pen  

An Evening on the Soundstage with Nikole Hannah-Jones  

This inaugural ISGRJ-New Brunswick signature event was held on Tuesday, April 5, 2022, at 7PM at Alexander Library on the New Brunswick campus.

 Nikole Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. She has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times. Hannah-Jones also earned the John Chancellor Award for Distinguished Journalism and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen's Club of New York. In 2020 she was inducted into the Society of American Historians and in 2021, into the North Carolina Media Hall of Fame. She was also named a member of the prestigious Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2016, Hannah-Jones co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which seeks to increase the number of reporters and editors of color. She holds a Master of Arts in Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina and earned her BA in History and African-American studies from the University of Notre Dame.