PRESIDENT

Dr. Charles E. Jones
Georgia State University

Charles E. Jones is an associate professor in and founding Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University.  He earned a Ph.D. degree in Political Science at Washington State University.  He is a former Congressional Black Caucus Graduate Fellow and a Fulbright Hayes Fellow.  Jones's teaching and research interests center on African-American Politics and African-American Studies.  His past research projects have focused on African-Americans in the legislative process (Congressional Black Caucus; the Parliamentary Black Caucus in Great Britain; and racial state legislative caucuses); Black electoral success in majority white districts and African American Social Movements.  He has published extensively in scholarly journals and anthologies on African American politics and African-American Studies. Professor Jones is the editor of the anthology entitled: Black Panther Party Reconsidered (Black Classic Press, 1998).  He recently co-authored "Return to the Source: the Role of Service-Learning in Recapturing the Empowerment Mission of African-American Studies" which appeared in The Black Scholar (Summer 2005). His current research project is a comprehensive political history of the Black Panther Party tentatively entitled Right on!: The Rise and Fall of the Black Panther Party, 1966-1982.  Professor Jones is the associate editor of the International Journal of Africana Studies and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Black Studies; National Political Science; and New Political Science.

VICE-PRESIDENT

Sundiata Cha-Jua

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua directs the Afro-American Studies & Research Program and teaches history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Cha-Jua's area of specialization is African American history.  His research interests include African American community formation, radical and nationalist Black social movements, theories of race and racism, African American historiography, and culturally relevant pedagogy.  His published work has focused on African American self-development and resistance during the Nadir, 1877-1917 and agency in the contemporary Black Freedom Movement, 1966 to the present. He is the author of America's First Black Town, Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830-1915 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000) and numerous scholarly and popular articles in publications such as Black Scholar, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of American History, Journal of Urban History, New Politics, Radical History Review and Souls.  He recently finished Race Struggles a co- edited book with Helen Neville and Ted Koditschek for the University of Illinois Press.  Cha-Jua is currently finishing a book project entitled "Rising Waters": Explorations in Radical Black Historiography, editing a collection of primary documents on resistance to lynching, writing a book that proposes a structural theory of racial oppression and offers a new paradigm for analyzing African American history.

SECRETARY

Jacqueline I. Bryant

Chicago State University

Jacqueline Imani Bryant is an associate professor of English and an affiliate faculty member of African American Studies at Chicago State University.  She holds a Ph.D. in English from Kent State University.  For six years, 1991-1997, Jacqueline Bryant was Coordinator of Administrative Services in Black Studies at Cleveland State University, under the directorship of the late Dr. Howard A. Mims.  In 1996, she was honored to be an NCBS Administrative Institute Fellow.  For the period 2000-2004, she served as Chairperson of the English and Speech Department at Chicago State University.  Added to her current, graduate/undergraduate, teaching/advising assignments, Jacqueline Bryant heads and serves on numerous campus committees.  Her presentations center mainly on the life and works of Gwendolyn Brooks and selected literary works of early Black women writers.  Publications include articles and reviews in Journal of Black Studies, Warpland: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas, College Language Association Journal, and African American Rhetoric(s). Her book, The Foremother Figure in Early Black Women's Literature: "Clothed in My Right Mind," is a part of the Studies in African American History and Culture Series, Garland Publishing (1999).  She is the editor of the book entitled Gwendolyn Brooks' Maud Martha: A Critical Collection, Third World Press (2002), and editor of the forthcoming work entitled Gwendolyn Brooks and Working Writers.  Finally, Jacqueline Bryant has received a number of teaching and service awards; however, the most cherished is the NCBS Fannie Lou Hamer and Kwame Nkrumah Award received March 18, 2006.

TREASURER

Alfred Young

Georgia Southern University

Dr. Alfred Young is a Professor of History at Georgia Southern University. He received his Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.  Dr. Young has published a monograph, journal articles, encyclopedia entries, essays and most recently co-authored, Africana Studies: Past Present and Future.  His long and active career epitomizes the motto of NCBS Promoting Academic Excellence and Social Responsibility. During his tenure at GSU, he has created and served as Director of the African and African American Studies Program, and introduced the Model Organization of African Unity (now African Union) to Georgia Southern University. To facilitate the development of Africana/Black Studies at GSU, he has successfully won numerous grants and awards, including a $126,374 grant from the US Department of Education, International Studies and Foreign Language Program. Professor Young's fund raising and managerial skills have served NCBS well since his election as Treasurer in 1998. Through his work with community groups and organizations, Professor Young has extended Africana/Black Studies beyond the academy.