2024 Timuel D. Black, Jr. Short-Term Fellowship in African American Studies

The Vivian G. Harsh Society, Inc., plans to grant one Timuel D. Black Jr. Short-Term Fellowship in African American Studies for summer 2024. This short-term fellowship includes a $4,000 stipend and is intended to support research by scholars, writers, artists, educators, and/or researchers using collections from the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature housed at the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library of the Chicago Public Library. The fellowship period is for one month during Summer 2024 (June-August). During their time in-residence in Chicago, the fellow will give a public lecture related to their research in the Harsh Collection and contribute a short summary of their research to the Harsh Society newsletter.

Applicants are welcome to submit applications on any topic that requires significant use of the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection. However, this year the fellowship committee is particularly interested in research projects that engage politics, broadly. In their application, applicants should note the specific papers/collections that they plan to use within the Harsh collection, and ensure that those collections have already been processed and are open for research.

All applications must be submitted electronically on Submittable: https://bmrc.submittable.com/submit/282953/2024-timuel-d-black-jr-short-term-summer-fellowship-in-african-american-studies and must include a letter of interest, a project description, curriculum vita, and two letters of recommendation. The Summer 2024 application deadline for the Timuel D. Black Short-term Fellowship is due ***UPDATED*** Friday February 2nd, 2024 by 11:59pm (CST). Letters of Recommendation must also be submitted by Friday February 2nd, 2024 by 11:59 pm (CST). Please enter your letter writers' email addresses using the prompt on the Submittable application. Alert letter writers to look for this request via an email from Submittable (including in Spam folder if not in Inbox).

Applicants will be notified of application results in March 2024. The Vivian G. Harsh Society's Timuel D. Black Short-term Fellowship application is hosted on Submittable in collaboration with the Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC). However, the Timuel D. Black Short-term Fellowship competition is a separate fellowship program from the BMRC Short-term Fellowship program with a separate application process. Applicants are welcome to apply for both fellowship programs. 

About Timuel D. Black, Jr. Timuel D. Black, Jr. was a high school teacher and professor at the City Colleges of Chicago, a historian, and an author of the acclaimed Bridges of Memories histories of Black Chicago. Professor Black played a major role in many of the landmark struggles that African Americans waged in Chicago and the broader U.S. during the 20th century, including: education justice and desegregation struggles, Black labor organizing, voting rights, the Chicago Freedom Movement, and the historic campaign to elect Harold Washington mayor of Chicago. He recently passed away at the age of 102 in 2021.

Contact: Additional questions about the 2024 fellowship, should be directed to Dr. Elizabeth Todd-Breland (etoddbre@uic.edu) and include “Timuel D. Black Fellowship” in the subject line. The Vivian G. Harsh Society, Inc., a 501 © (3) organization, focuses on preserving, making accessible, and publicizing the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection, the largest research collection of documents pertaining to Black history and culture in the Midwest. Learn more about the Vivian G. Harsh Society.

2009
Sherry Williams, Bronzeville/Black Chicago Historical Society
Professor Sonja Williams, Chair of the Department of Radio, Television and Film in the John H. Johnson School of Communications at Howard University

2010
Brian Dollinar, PhD., Professor, African-American Literature, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
Gerald Butters, PhD., History Department, Aurora University

2011

Bonnie Claudia Harrison, Assistant Professor, Social Sciences, Kennedy-King College, City Colleges of Chicago
Worth K. Hayes, Assistant Professor, Benedict College, Columbia, South Carolina

2017
Thabiti Lewis, Associate Professor of English, Washington State University 

2018
LaGuana Gray, Associate Professor of History, University of Texas at San Antonio

2019
Jalylah Burrell, Postdoctoral Fellow, Rice University

2020
Shannon Missick, PhD Candidate, State University of New York at Albany

2022
Asif Wilson, PhD, Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education, University of Illinois Urban-Champaign

2023
Akira Drake Rodriguez, Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design