To some, the civil rights era seems like ancient history, but to others, it’s within living memory. Françoise N. Hamlin helps put the history of the era into a broader context about who we are as a people and what it means to be an American.  

Hamlin is the Royce Family Associate Professor in history and Africana studies at Brown University. Prior to joining the faculty at Brown, Hamlin was a fellow at the University of Michigan, Harvard University, the Radcliffe Institute, and the Andrew Carnegie Foundation. She also spent several years as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Hamlin is the author of “Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta after World War II,” winner of the 2012 Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize and the 2013 Lillian Smith Book Award. She also authored “These Truly Are the Brave: An Anthology of African American Writings on Citizenship and War” and republished the previously self-published 1975 autobiography of Mississippi civil rights activist, Vera Pigee, “The Struggle of Struggles.” Her co-edited anthology, “From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle,” will be published in spring 2024.