"A Conversation about Reparations in America with Professor Amilcar Shabazz"

Abstract

A champion of social justice and a distinguished scholar-activist, Amilcar Shabazz has dedicated his life and career to the discipline of Black Studies and community engagement. As a native of Beaumont, Texas, he completed his bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of Texas-Austin (1982) before obtaining his master’s degree in history from Lamar University (1990) and PhD in history from the University of Houston (1996). Shabazz has taught at multiple higher education institutions such as the University of Alabama, Oklahoma State University, and the University of Oklahoma. He currently serves as a full professor of history and Africana Studies in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Over the course of his career, Shabazz has accumulated an extensive publication record. He is the author of Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas (2004). He is co-editor of The Forty Acres Documents: What Did the United States Really Promise the People Freed from Slavery? (1994) and Women and Others: Perspectives on Gender, Race, and Empire (2007). His journal articles and short essays appear in the Journal of African American History, The Houston Review, The Human Tradition in Texas, ArtLies: Texas Art Journal, and the Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record. In addition to his written scholarship, Shabazz’s leadership is evident in multiple academic and civic organizations. He is a past president of the National Council for Black Studies as well as a founding member of the New African People’s Organization, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, and the African Heritage Reparation Assembly of Amherst, Massachusetts. His advocacy surrounding reparations has been covered by major media outlets such as the Boston Globe, Washington Post and NBC News. In the following interview, Dr. Shabazz discusses the roots of his activism, his journey to professorship, the state of Black Studies in the academy, and the current push for reparations. This conversation took place at the New Africa House on the campus of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.