Rhonda Y. Williams

Rhonda Y. Williams

Rhonda Y. Williams, known as "Dr. Rhonda," joined the Department of African American Studies as the Coleman A. Young Foundation Endowed Chair and Professor in August 2023. She came to Wayne State from Vanderbilt University where she served as the inaugural John L. Seigenthaler Chair in American History and Professor in History and African American Diaspora Studies. Her research focuses on low-income Black women's and marginalized people's experiences, everyday lives, politics, and social struggles. She is the author of the award-winning The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women's Struggles against Urban Inequality (2004) and Concrete Demands: The Search for Black Power in the 20th Century (2015), as well as numerous articles and essays, including her classic, “I’m a Keeper of Information: History-Telling and Voice,” in the Oral History Review (2001), and the more recently published, “Places Created & Peopled: ‘Black Women: Where they be ... suffering?’,” Journal of Urban History (2020) and “History Teaches Us to Resist: A Conversation with the Author Dr. Mary Frances Berry,” Journal of Civil and Human Rights (2021).

Williams is also the co-editor of the award-winning book series Justice, Power, and Politics at the University of North Carolina Press and is co-editor of Teaching the American Civil Rights Movement.

As a former faculty member in the History Department at Case Western Reserve University, Williams established and directed the Postdoctoral Fellowship in African American Studies, and founded and directed the university-wide Social Justice Institute.

Currently, Williams is working on two research projects: A Black Power History of the United States (Beacon Press) and Unsympathetic Actors on illicit narcotics economies in the post-1930s United States. 

She is a native of Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

News mentions

• Damon J. Keith Center’s 8th Biennial Lecture explores race and justice through poetry and music

  Documentary appearances

• 137 Shots, Director: Michael Milano, Netflix (2021)
• Dispatches from Cleveland, Director: Catherine Gund, Aubin Pictures (2017)

Selected publications

• Black Urban History at the Crossroads: Race and Place in the American City, edited by Leslie M. Harris, Clarence Lang, Rhonda Y. Williams, and Joe William Trotter Jr. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024)
• Concrete Demands: The Search for Black Power in the 20th Century (New York: Routledge Press, 2015)
• The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)
• “Remembering Civil Rights Activist Fannie Lou Hamer,” Roundtable Essay on Keisha N. Blain’s Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America, Black Perspectives, AAIHS on-line journal, October 2022. Accessible at: aaihs.org/remembering-civil-rights-activist-fannie-lou-hamer Cited as one of the “Most Popular Black Perspectives Pieces of the Year (December 2022). Accessible at: aaihs.org/most-popular-black-perspectives-pieces-of-the-year. Reprinted in the Journal of Civil and Human Rights 8:2 (fall/winter 2022)
• “History Teaches Us to Resist: A Conversation with the Author Dr. Mary Frances Berry,” Journal of Civil and Human Rights 7:2 (Fall/Winter 2021), 60-82
• “Places Created & Peopled: ‘Black Women: Where they be … suffering?’,” Journal of Urban History 46 (On-line, January 2020; In Print, May 2020)
• “For Black Women Who Educate for Social Justice & Put Their Time, Lives, and Spirits on the Line,” Black Women and Social Justice Education: Legacies and Lessons, eds. Stephanie Evans, Andrea D. Domingue, Tania D. Mitchell (SUNY Press, 2019)

Courses taught by Rhonda Y. Williams

Winter Term 2025 (future)

• AFS3500 - Special Topics: Literacy, Race, and Urban Society