Ph.D. , History

M.A. , History

B.A. , Economics

Dr. Amilcar Shabazz is head of the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and teaches in the area of historical studies with an emphasis on the political economy of social and cultural movements, education, and public history. He was born in Beaumont, Texas, and after he graduated from Monsignor Kelly High School he went on to receive his bachelor’s degree in economics from The University of Texas at Austin, his masters from Lamar University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Houston, both in history.

His book Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), received numerous honors including the T.R. Fehrenbach Book Award and being ranked a top ten nonfiction book by Essence Magazine. Shabazz has also published The Forty Acres Documents, a sourcebook on reparations, along with journal articles, book chapters, reviews and writings in publications as diverse as The Source Magazine of Hip-Hop Music, Culture & Politics. His newest book co-edited with Celia R. Daileader and Rhoda E. Johnson, is Women & Others: Perspective on Race, Gender, and Empire (Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2007).

An international scholar, he was named a Fulbright Senior Specialist and has done work in Brazil, Ghana, Japan, Cuba, Mali, France, Nicaragua, and Jamaica. In recognition of his work as a teacher, in 2001, The University of Alabama National Alumni Association awarded him its coveted Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award. Presently, he is completing an historical biography of an African American newspaper publisher and human rights activist entitled "Master of the Blast: Carter Wesley and the Struggle for National Liberation."

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For a biographical essay, see “Amilcar Shabazz: The Heart of the African-American Experience,” Cardinal Cadence March-May 2004 (vol. 322), pp. 36-38 [available online as a PDF file at: http://www.lamar.edu/newsevents/cc/issues/LR_cadence_vol322.pdf] and biographical listings in Who’s Who in America, 58th edition (Marquis, 2004) and in the Directory of American Scholars, 10th edition (Gale Group, 2001).