2026 Black History Month Celebration

Lawrence Jackson

Through his writing and research, Lawrence Jackson recast the study of twentieth century African-American literature and culture. He is widely known for his extensive scholarship in this field, which includes biographies of Ralph Ellison and Chester B. Himes, as well as a narrative history of mid-century writers.

Jackson’s creative nonfiction work is focused on structural foundations of racism and inequality. He writes persuasively about the historical forces behind unrest in the city of Baltimore, including mass incarceration, housing segregation, and disparities in health care and education, and interrogates the discrepancy between the city’s rich history and its current record levels of poverty and alienation. Jackson launched and now serves as director of the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts, an initiative that showcases the unique arts, history, and culture of Baltimore. The center fosters organic links between the intellectual life of Johns Hopkins University and the city’s historic African-American communities, celebrating the strengths and potential of both. The Billie Holiday Center serves a cultural purpose, hosting regular events to nurture such connections, as well as an archival one, protecting artifacts of African-American culture and politics.

Jackson joined Johns Hopkins University as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in 2016 from Emory University.

Amaka Okechukwu

Amaka Okechukwu is an Associate Research Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar engaged in research on social movements, Black communities, urban sociology, race, and public history. She is the author of To FulFill These Rights: Political Struggle over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions (Columbia University Press 2019). The book is the winner of the Eduardo Bonilla-Silva book award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Ida B. Wells-Barnett book award from the Association of Black Sociologists, and was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2021. She is also the recipient of the Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Institute of Citizens and Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation), the Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was an African American Digital Humanities Scholar at the University of Maryland, College-Park.

She is currently completing her next book manuscript, tentatively titled Black Belt Brooklyn: Community Building and Black Social Life in the Late 20th Century, which is about community organizing in Black Brooklyn communities during the urban crisis. Her scholarly articles have appeared in journals such as City & Community, Du Bois Review, Society and Space, The Black Scholar, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Social Forces, and more. She has also worked in public history roles for Weeksville Heritage Center and Brooklyn Historical Society (now the Center for Brooklyn History).