Profiles & Narratives

The UMass Black Presence website serves as a living history of the experiences, contributions, and stories of Black students, alumni, faculty and staff. Through the oral history interviews and archival research, we've captured these stories to provide an authentic and in-depth understanding of these lived experiences.

This is a growing website with additional interviews, news, profiles, and moments in history being populated on an ongoing basis. We encourage you to share any content you have that should be highlighted on this webpage.

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Dr. Irma McClauren at a table with photo prints in front of her
Irma McClaurin '76MFA, '89MA, '93PhD and UMass Distinguished Alumna is the founder of the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive. The BFA was created in collaboration with the UMass W.E.B. Du Bois Library Department of Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) and the W.E.B. Du Bois Center. Dr. Irma McClaurin is an accomplished scholar, anthropologist, former university president, and award-winning writer.
James Baldwin and friends at a book party
James Baldwin spent much of his life being told he was too radical—too radical for white critics, too radical to speak at the March on Washington, and too radical for the Ivy leagues. This did not concern him. He “found his kind” at UMass, in the words of his then-personal assistant, Dwight “Skip” Stackhouse.
Unquestionably the greatest known athlete in UMass history, Julius Erving, known simply to the world as "Dr. J," played basketball for two seasons under legendary head coach and fellow UMass Athletics Hall of Fame inductee Jack Leaman from 1969-71. Following his collegiate playing days, Erving went on to be one of the greatest players in ABA and NBA history, led the then New York Nets to ABA titles in 1974 and 1976, and the Philadelphia 76ers to the 1983 NBA championship.
Coach Banda in a UMass shirt
Kalekeni Banda is a celebrated UMass Women's soccer team coach, having held that position from 1980 - 87 and leading the Minutewomen to six consecutive NCAA appearances, including five straight trips to the final four. He graduated from UMass Amherst with a degree in Physical Education in 1975. 
Probably the first African American to receive a doctorate at UMass Amherst and the first nationally to receive a doctorate in agronomy, Major Franklin Spaulding earned a PhD in 1935 for his study Factors influencing the rate of decomposition of Different Types of Plant Tissues in Soils and the Effects of Products on Plant Growth. Born in North Carolina on Sept. 18, 1898, Major Spaulding was the sixth of at least eleven children of the farmer McIver Spaulding and his wife Elsie.
Marcellette Williams in regalia at the graduate school graduation
Marcellette Gaillard-Gay Williams served as chancellor of the Amherst campus from July 2001 to June 2002. The first woman to serve as chancellor, Williams advocated for the importance of community, collaboration, interdisciplinary understanding, and human enablement.
Marcus Camby playing for the Knicks
One of the most decorated athletes UMass has ever produced, Marcus Camby is among the top basketball players from UMass. He was the highest NBA Draft Pick in UMass history, being taken second overall by the Toronto Raptors in 1996. He went on to play in the NBA with the Toronto Raptors, New York Knicks, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers, Portland Trailblazers, and Houston Rockets.

Matthew Washington Bullock, Class of 1904, was born on September 11, 1881 in Dabney, North Carolina to slave parents. Mr. Bullock's parents fled the south in 1889 to Massachusetts with seven children and ten dollars in cash.

Max Roach playing drums
Max Roach, the legendary jazz drummer and one of the first jazz musicians to teach full-time at the college level, joined the faculty in 1972 as a visiting professor and was one of the founders of the Jazz in July programs in improvisation. He continued his affiliation with the campus until his retirement in 1994. In 1988 he was the first jazz musician to receive a MacArthur Fellowship – a $372,000 “genius grant.”
Mtali Banda
Mtali Banda grew up between Madison, WI and Atlanta Georgia. He received his B.A. in Afro-American Studies from UMass Amherst in 2017 and remained at UMass to complete his PHD on the literature and culture tracks.
Musicologist, playwright, novelist and political activist Lola Shirley Graham, born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1896, became the second wife to W.E.B. Du Bois in 1951.  Lola Shirley Graham was taught at a young age to stand up to injustice.  She wrote her first editorial to an Indianapolis paper protesting racial discrimination when she was 13, after she was denied access to a YWCA swimming pool. Graham was entrusted with the famous Du Bois papers, playing a pivotal role in their preservation.
Tyrone Parham posing for a photo with his wife and 2 children
Tyrone A. Parham is the assistant vice chancellor/chief of police at the University of Massachusetts Amherst since January 2016. He received his bachelor’s degree in crime, law and justice and his master’s in workforce education and development from Penn State and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy.