Hettie V. Williams, Ph.D.

Associate Professor in African American History
President of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS)

Department: History and Anthropology

Office: James and Marlene Howard Hall 329

Recipient of the Eugene Simko Faculty Leadership Award, the PGIS Award in Social Justice, Co-Founder of the Monmouth University Race Conference, Founder of the Works in Progress Seminar Series, and nominated for the Distinguished Teaching Award in 2022

Hettie V. Williams, Ph.D., has taught survey courses in U.S. history, Western Civilization, and upper division courses on the history of African Americans at the university level for more than fifteen years. Her teaching and research interests include: African American intellectual history, gender in U.S. history, and race/ethnicity studies.

Currently, she is an Associate Professor of African American history in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University located in West Lang Branch, New Jersey where she teaches courses in African American history and U.S. history. She also is President of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS).

She has published book chapters, essays, and encyclopedia entries and edited/authored five books. Her latest books include Bury My Heart in a Free Land: Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History (Praeger, 2017) and, with Dr. G. Reginald Daniel, professor of historical sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Race and the Obama Phenomenon: The Vision of a More Perfect Multiracial Union (University Press of Mississippi 2014).

Hettie has also contributed opinion pieces, book reviews, and essays to media outlets such as the HuffPost, Daring Woman Magazine, the Asbury Park Press, the Star Ledger, and the award-winning peer reviewed blog Black Perspectives. She is also a host on the New Books Network Intellectual History Channel and a research historian on “My Buddy: The WWII 369^th Documentary Project.”

She also hosts a weekly podcast show with Monmouth University faculty titled “This Week in Black History, Society, and Culture.”

Education

Ph.D., Drew University

Scholarly Interests

African American intellectual history, gender in U.S. history, and race studies

Books

Williams, Hettie V. ed. Bury My Heart in a Free Land:Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2017.

Williams, Hettie V., and G. Reginald Daniel, eds. Race and the Obama Phenomenon: The Vision of a More Perfect Multiracial Union. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.

Williams, Hettie V., and Julius O. Adekunle, eds. Converging Identities: Blackness in the Modern African Diaspora. African World Series Edited by Toyin Falola. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2013.

Williams, Hettie V., and Julius O. Adekunle, eds. Color Struck: Essays on Race and Ethnicity in Global Perspective. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2010.

Williams, Hettie V. We Shall Overcome to We Shall Overrun: The Collapse of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Revolt (1962-1968). Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009.

Book chapters:

Williams, Hettie V. “The Greensboro Four and the Sit-in Movement.” In 50 Events that Changed African American History, edited by Jamie Wilson. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio,2019.

Williams, Hettie V. “Sounding the Trumpet: Anna Arnold Hedgeman and the Civil Rights Movement in the North.” In Bury My Heart in a Free Land: Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History, edited by Hettie V. Williams. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2017.

Williams, Hettie V. “In Pursuit of Self: The Identity of an American President and Cosmopolitanism.” In Race and the Obama Phenomenon: The Vision of a More Perfect Multiracial Union edited by G. Reginald Daniel and Hettie V. Williams. University Press of Mississippi, 2014.

Williams, Hettie V. “Black Like Who? The Identity of an American
President.” In Converging Identities: Blackness in the Modern African Diaspora. edited by Julius Adekunle and Hettie V. Williams in the African World Series Edited by Toyin Falola. Durham, NC:
Carolina Academic Press, 2013.

Williams, Hettie V. “Black No More: African Americans and the New Race Science.” In Color Struck: Essays on Race and Ethnicity in Global Perspective, edited by Hettie V. Williams and Julius Adekunle. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2010.

Book Reviews:

Review of These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore, for “Black Perspectives,” Black Perspectives, Peer Reviewed Blog, African American Intellectual History Society, 2018.

Review of Black Women’s Christian Activism by Betty Livingston Adams, New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Summer, 2018, 310-315.

Review of Swift to Wrath: Lynching in Global Historical Perspective edited by William D. Carrigan and Christopher Waldrep, in The Journal of African American History 100, no. 4 (Fall 2015): 788-791.

Review of Part II and III of Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (University of North Carolina Press, 2015)edited by Mia Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, and Barbara D. Savage for the African American Intellectual History Society Blog, June 1, 2015.

Review of On the Corner: African American Intellectuals and the Urban Crisis by Daniel Matlin, (Harvard University Press, 2013) for the African American Intellectual History Society Blog April 5, 2015.

Review of Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism by Erik S. McDuffie, in The Journal of African American History 98, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 336-339.

Encyclopedia Essays:

Williams, Hettie V. “Race Riots.” Multicultural America, edited by Carlos E. Cortes, and J. Geoffrey Golson. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2013.

Williams, Hettie V. “What is in a Name: Indigenous African Americans and Neo-African Americans in the African Diaspora.” In The African American Mosaic: Online Database of the American Experience. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2012.

Williams, Hettie V. “New Jersey.” The Social History of Crime and Punishment: An Encyclopedia, edited by Wilbur Miller, and J. Geoffrey Golson. Thousand Oaks; CA: SAGE Publications, 2011.

Williams, Hettie V. “Camden, New Jersey.” The Social History of Crime and Punishment: An Encyclopedia, edited by Wilbur Miller, and J. Geoffrey Golson. Thousand Oaks; CA: SAGE Publications, 2011.

Williams, Hettie V. “Newark, New Jersey.” The Social History of Crime and Punishment: An Encyclopedia, edited by Wilbur Miller, and J. Geoffrey Golson. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2011.

William, Hettie V. “Kwame Nkrumah.” In Encyclopedia of African American History, edited by Leslie Alexander and Walter Rucker. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2010.

Williams, Hettie V. “Olaudah Equiano.” In Encyclopedia of African
American History, edited by Leslie Alexander and Walter Rucker. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2010.

Williams, Hettie V. “Martin Delany.” In Encyclopedia of African American History, edited by Leslie Alexander and Walter Rucker. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2010.

Williams, Hettie V. “Queen Nzinga.” In Encyclopedia of African American History, edited by Leslie Alexander and Walter Rucker. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2010.

Williams, Hettie V. “Sojourner Truth.” In Encyclopedia of African American History, edited by Leslie Alexander and Walter Rucker. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2008.

Williams, Hettie V. “Hip Hop Music and Culture.” In American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Political, Social, Religious and Artistic Movements, edited by Gina Misiroglu. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2008.

Williams, Hettie V. “Race and Racial Thinking.” In Encyclopedia of U.S Indian Policy and Law, edited by Tim Garrison. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2008.

Multimedia

Podcasts

Dr. Williams is a host on the New Books Network for New Books in Intellectual History Podcast Channel

Research Historian for Documentary

Interview with Clifford Mason about his book Macbeth in Harlem: Black Theater in America from the Beginning to Raison in the Sun June 22, 2020
Interview with Dr. Kabria Baumgartner about her book In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Intellectual Activism in Antebellum America June 16, 2020
Interview with Dr. Paula C. Austin about her book Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life March 10, 2020
Interview with Dr. Graham Russell Gao Hodges about his Book Black New Jersey, February 18, 2020
Interview with Dr. Christopher Cameron about his book Black Freethinkers, January 7, 2020

Dr. Williams is a research historian on “My Buddy: The WWII 369^th Documentary Project,” Hawaii News Now story on the project March 6, 2019:

Symposium Panelist

Dr. Williams on a Panel with Monmouth Faculty: Beatles Symposium, West Long Branch, New Jersey, 2014.

Media Interview

Dr. Williams interviewed by Mixed Chicks Chat with Heidi Durrow and Fanshen Cox, Episode 257, May 23, 2012

Dr. Williams was interviewed on WOBM-FM‘s Eyes on the Jersey Shore program on Feb. 21, 2020 to discuss these questions during Black History Monmouth.

Presentations/Invited Talks

Invited Paper, “The Green Movement as a Woman’s Movement in the Writings and Work of Wangari Mathai and Grace Lee Boggs,” Annual Conference of the African American Intellectual History Society, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 23-25 March, 2019.

Work in Progress Presentation, “Laboratory of Democracy: Black Students at Columbia University before 1954,” Department of History and Anthropology’s Works in Progress Seminar Series, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey, 23 January, 2019.

Invited Paper, “Sounding the Trumpet of Democracy: Black Women Intellectuals and the Great War,” at the 103^rd Annual Meeting and Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Marriott Hotel in Indianapolis, Indiana, 3-8 October, 2018.

Invited Paper, “Yep, You Done Taken My Blues and Gone”: African American Music, the Beatles, and Whiteness, The Beatles’ The WHITE ALBUM: An International Symposium, at Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey, 9-11, November, 2018.

Invited Roundtable Participant, “Marion Thompson Wright and New Perspectives on Black Intellectuals in the Early Civil Rights Movement, 1915-1954,” African American Intellectual History Society Special Panel at the Tenth Annual Conference of The Society for U.S. Intellectual History at the historic Warick Allerton Hotel in Chicago Illinois, 8-11 November, 2018.

Invited Paper, “Black Woman Freedom Writer: The Life of and Thought of Anna Arnold Hedgeman,” Annual Conference of the African American Intellectual History Society, Brandeis University, Boston, Massachusetts, 21-23, March, 2018.

Invited Paper, “Outraged Mother: Anna Arnold Hedgeman and the Civil Rights Movement in the North,” Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Hilton Netherlands Plaza Hotel, Cincinnati, Ohio, 26-30, September, 2017.

Invited Paper, “Didn’t Not Mary Preach the Risen Savior”: African American Women as Prophetesses,” The Feminine Mystic Conference, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Great Barrington, MA, 9 June, 2017.

Invited Paper, “Going Home: The 369^th and Harlem as an Identity-Making Space,” Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region Annual Conference, Columbia University, New York, New York, 28-29 April, 2017.

Invited Presentation, “African American Women and the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey,” Women’s History Month Program, Union County College, 30 March, 2017.

Paper, “People’s Power: Ernest Thompson, Black Labor-Left Coalition Politics, and the Civil Rights Movement in the North,” Second Annual Conference of the African American Intellectual History Society, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, 24-26 March, 2017.

Invited Paper, “All that I am or Hope to Be”: Marion Thompson Wright and New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement,” African American Intellectual History Society First Annual Conference, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 10-11 March, 2016.

Invited Paper, “Now is the Time to Plan for Your Future: Sara Spencer Washington and the Black Freedom Struggle in New Jersey, 1913-1953,” Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Centennial Annual Meeting and Conference, Atlanta, Georgia 23-27, September, 2015.

Invited Paper, “A Young Colored Girl’s Haven from Prejudice: The Montclair YWCA and the Progressive History of the Y Movement in World History,” The Northeastern History Graduate Student Association’s 7^th Annual Graduate Student Conference, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, 21-22, March, 2015.

Invited Paper, “Of Pathologies and Loyalties: The Idea of Race and the Emergence of the Prison Industrial Complex in a Cold War Context, (1947-1994),” The 7^th Annual American Political History Graduate Conference: Americans and War, Boston University American Political History Institute, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, 20-21, March, 2015.

Invited Paper, “A Young Colored Girl’s Haven from Prejudice: The Montclair YWCA and the Black Intelligentsia in North Jersey, 1912-1946,” Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Annual Conference, Memphis, Tennessee, 24-28 September, 2014.

Invited Paper, “The Georgia of the North: Black Professionals and the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey,” New England Historical Association Annual Conference, Springfield College, Springfield, Massachusetts, 25-26 April 2014.

Invited Paper, “Call Us By Our Name:” Black Women Claiming Voice and the Divine in American History and Culture,” Ways of Knowing Conference at Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 25-26 October 2013.

Invited Paper, “The Identity of an American President and Cosmopolitanism,” International Journal of Arts & Sciences Conference for Academic Disciplines, Harvard University Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, 26-30 May 2013.

Invited Paper, “Land of Peril and Promise: A Survey of the Civil Rights Activities of the Black Professional Class in New Jersey, 1909-1949,” The Sixties at Fifty Conference, Boston University Graduate Student and Political History Conference, Boston,Massachusetts, 22-23 March, 2013.

Guest Speaker, “Obama’s Mixed Race Identity in Global Perspective,” International Program and the Big Read, Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, New Jersey, 5 March, 2013.

Faculty Forum, “Obama’s Cosmopolitan Identity in Black and White,” Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey, 27 April, 2011.

Invited Paper, “Phenomenal Women: Black Women’s Public Leadership in American History and the Sisters in the House,” The Fourth Annual African American Spring Symposium, University of Texas, San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, 14, April, 2011.

Workshop, “Creating Student Websites,” Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey, 23 February 2011.

Invited Panelist, “Teaching with Technology,” Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey, 29 March 2011.

Panel Chair, “Race in the Obama Era,” Monmouth University Conference on Race: Examining Race in the 21^st Century, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey, 11-13 November, 2010.

Paper, “In Pursuit of Self: The Identity of An American President and Cosmopolitanism,” Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference: Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies, DePaul University, Lincoln Park Campus, Chicago, Illinois, 5-6 November, 2010.

Paper, “Black is My Country: The Pivotal Year 1968 and the Global Dimensions of Black Power,” Mid-Atlantic World History Association Conference: Time and How it Frames Our World,” Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, 17 October, 2009.

Invited Panelist, “1968: The Turning Point in the Vietnam Era, Looking Back 40 Years Later,” Vietnam Era Educational Center, Robert B. Meyer Reception Center, Holmdel, New Jersey, 16 October, 2009.

Invited Panelist, “Let’s Talk About Race,” Frank Talk Art Bistro & Books, Red Bank, New Jersey, 25 September, 2009.

Guest Lecture, “We Shall Overcome to, We Shall Overrun: Black Identity and the African American Freedom Struggle,” African American History Class, Professor Michael Nash, Essex County Community College, Newark, New Jersey, 9 June, 2009.

Invited Paper, “The Times, They are a Changin’: American Racial Identities in the Age of Globalization,” International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations 39^th International Conference-Civilizations in a Time of Change and Crisis, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan 3-6 June, 2009.

Guest Speaker, “Paint It Black: The Politics of Culture in the Black Arts Movement,” Spring Colloquium, Graduate Program in Liberal Arts (MALA), Monmouth University, 24 April, 2009.

Invited Paper, “Black is the Color of Discrimination: African Americans and the New Racial Genetics,” National Association of African American Studies (NAAAS), Annual Conference, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 9-14, February 2009.

Forthcoming

Williams, Hettie V. Laboratory of Democracy: Black Students at Columbia University in the Early Twentieth Century, 1915-1954. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, (forthcoming) 2020.