About Us
Yohuru Williams
UNIVERSITY CHAIR, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, & FOUNDING DIRECTOR OF THE RACIAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE, UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS
Dr. Yohuru Williams is a Professor of History at the University of St. Thomas. Dr. Williams is the author of: Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights Black Power and Black Panthers in New Haven (Blackwell, 2006), Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement (Routledge, 2015), and Teaching beyond the Textbook: Six Investigative Strategies (Corwin Press, 2008). He served as general editor for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History's 2002 and 2003 Black History Month publications, The Color Line Revisited (Tapestry Press, 2002), and The Souls of Black Folks: Centennial Reflections (Africa World Press, 2003). Dr. Williams has appeared on a wide range of media programs, most notably: ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Aljazeera America, BET, CSPAN, EBRU Today, Fox Business News, Fresh Outlook, Huff Post Live, and NPR. Dr. Williams is finishing a new book entitled In the Shadow of the Whipping Post: Lynching, Capital Punishment, and Jim Crow Justice in Delaware 1865-1965 under contract with Cambridge University Press.
Michael Lansing
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, AUGSBURG UNIVERSITY
Dr. Michael J. Lansing is Professor of History at Augsburg University. He is the author of Insurgent Democracy: The Nonpartisan League in North American Politics (2015) as well as articles in the Western Historical Quarterly, Environmental History, the Journal of Historical Geography, the Middle West Review, the Utah Historical Quarterly, Minnesota History, and Ethics, Place, and Environment. He is currently working on A Police State: Politics and Public Safety in Minneapolis, 1945-2020, a book that explores the rise of and resistance to police power in that city. An active public historian, his experiences include an oral history project with the Minnesota chapter of the Sierra Club, a congregational history, the Historyapolis Project, two years on the Legacy Strategic Agenda Collaborative (co-sponsored by the Minnesota Historical Society and the Minnesota Association of Local History Museums), and Purple Places: A Digital History Tour of Prince’s MInneapolis. His reflections on history and current events have appeared in MinnPost, Jacobin, and the Washington Post.