W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies to Host Symposium and Memorial Honoring Late Professor John H. Bracey

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The W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies is hosting a symposium and a memorial Oct. 20-21 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus honoring the intellectual legacy, mentorship, and activism of Professor John H. Bracey, Jr.  

The symposium and conversation will take place Friday, Oct. 20, from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in ILC Room S140. It will feature a keynote lecture by poet, playwright, essayist, editor, academic, and activist Sonia Sanchez. The event will also include remarks from College of Humanities & Fine Arts Interim Dean Joye Bowman and Professor and Chair of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies Yolanda Covington-Ward and panels on the pedagogy of care; Bracey’s impact on Black Studies; and the study of history.   

The memorial will take place Saturday, Oct. 21, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Campus Center Amherst Room. It will include featured guest speakers Professor Esther Terry, Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy, and Professor John Higginson; reflections from family and community members; musical selections; and an unveiling of a digital memory wall in Bracey’s honor. To add a reflection, pictures, or video to the digital memory wall, visit https://forms.gle/yi87GdfEp3hk1PuE6. 

A full schedule for both events can be found below.

Bracey was a leading figure in the fields of African American studies and U.S. history. He mentored countless students and helped create one of the nation’s first doctoral programs in African American studies at UMass Amherst. He was a member of the faculty in the department for 51 years, where he also served in several roles including as chair of the department and co-director of the graduate certificate in African Diaspora Studies. 

Symposium and Conversation Details

Event Information

Honoring the Legacy of Professor John H. Bracey, Jr: A Symposium and Conversation 
Friday, Oct. 20, 2023 
10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Integrative Learning Center (ILC), Room S140
North Pleasant St., Amherst, MA 01003 

Symposium Schedule

10:30 a.m.: Program Start and Welcoming Remarks from Yolanda Covington-Ward, Professor and Chair of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst 

10:35 a.m.: Welcoming Remarks from Dean Joye Bowman, Interim Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts and Professor of History, UMass Amherst 

10:45 a.m.: Panel One: A Pedagogy of Care: Honoring Prof. John H. Bracey, Jr. as a Teacher, Mentor, and Activist 

• Chair: Ivan Rosario, Graduate Student, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst 
• Moderator: Markeysha Davis, Africana Studies Scholar, English Language Arts/Advanced Placement Educator, Baystate Academy Charter Public School 
• Panelists:
  • E. Howard Ashford, Assistant Professor of History, SUNY Oneonta 
  • Karla Zelaya, Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, Smith College 
  • Ximena Hurtado, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Critical Race and Political Economy, Mount Holyoke College 
• Commentator: Toussiant Losier, Associate Professor, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies and Director, STPEC Program, UMass Amherst 

1:30 p.m.: Panel Two: Prof. John H. Bracey, Jr.’s Impact on Black Studies 

• Chair: Erika Slocumb, Graduate Student, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst 
• Moderator: Ousmane K. Power-Greene, Program Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of History, Clark University 
• Panelists:
  • Stephanie Y. Evans, Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies, Georgia State University 
  • Shawn Leigh Alexander, Professor and Chairperson of African and African-American Studies and Director of the Langston Hughes Center, University of Kansas 
  • Ernest Allen Jr., Professor Emeritus, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst 
• Commentator: Agustin Lao-Montes, Professor, Department of Sociology and W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, Co-Director of African Diaspora Studies Certificate, UMass Amherst 

2:45 p.m.: Panel Three: Prof. John H. Bracey, Jr. and the Study of History  

• Chair: Makhai Dickerson-Pells, Graduate Student, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst 
• Moderator: Christopher Tinson, Associate Professor of History and Department Chair, African American Studies, Saint Louis University 
• Panelists: 
  • Nneka Dennie, Assistant Professor of History and Core Faculty in Africana Studies, Washington and Lee University 
  • Lindsey Swindall, Teaching Associate Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology 
  • Peter Blackmer, Assistant Professor of Africology and African American Studies, Eastern Michigan University 
• Commentator: David Swiderski, Lecturer, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst 

4 p.m.: Introduction of Professor Sanchez, given by James Smethurst, Professor, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst  

4:05 p.m.: Keynote Lecture by Professor Sonia Sanchez  

Professor Sanchez has a long and distinguished career as a poet, playwright, essayist, editor, academic, and activist. She has published more than seventeen books of plays, short stories, and poetry, including Homegirls and Handgrenades, Shake Loose My Skin, Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums: Love Poems, Does Your House Have Lions?, Wounded in the House of a Friend, Under a Soprano Sky, I've Been a Woman, We a BaddDDD People, Homecoming, Morning Haiku, Collected Poems, and “I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t and Other Plays. She is also the author of such important plays as Sister Son/ji, The Bronx Is Next, and Uh Huh: But How Do It Free Us? She coedited SOS: Calling All Black People, A Black Arts Movement Reader with John Bracey, Jr. and James Smethurst. 

Professor Sanchez is also one of the founders of the field of Black Studies, teaching one of the first courses in African American literature at San Francisco State College in the 1960s. Professor Sanchez has held teaching positions at many colleges and universities, including San Francisco State, Temple University, Columbia University, the University of Pittsburgh, Amherst College, Rutgers University, and the University of Pennsylvania. She has lectured at hundreds of campuses, here and abroad. 

The list of honors Sanchez has collected is equally long and impressive. Among the many honors she has been awarded are a PEN Writing Award, the National Academy of Arts and Letters Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a National Education Association Award, an American Book Award for Poetry, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, selection as a Ford Freedman Scholar, a Langston Hughes Poetry Award, and a Robert Frost Medal for Poetry. 

5 p.m.: End of Symposium 

Memorial Details

Event Information

Honoring the Legacy of Professor John H. Bracey, Jr:  A Campuswide Memorial
Saturday, Oct. 21, 2023, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Amherst Room, Campus Center,  
Campus Center Way, Amherst, MA 01003 

Program Schedule

10 a.m.: Drum Introduction, Urban Thunder 

10:10 a.m.:  Introduction and Welcome, Yolanda Covington-Ward, Professor and Chair of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies 

10:15 a.m.:  Remarks from Chancellor Javier A. Reyes, 31st Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst  

10:30 a.m.: First Featured Guest Speaker: Prof. Esther Terry 

Professor Emerita, Former Department Chair and Associate Chancellor, UMass Amherst, President Emerita, Bennett College  

10:50 a.m.: Reflections and Comments from Family Members 

11:25 a.m.: Revealing of Digital Memory Wall 

11:30 a.m.: Break 

11:50 a.m.: Second Featured Guest Speaker: Former Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy, 30th Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst 

Noon: Reflections and Comments from Colleagues/Friends/Students 

1:20 p.m.: Third Featured Guest Speaker: Prof. John Higginson 

Professor Emeritus, Department of History, UMass Amherst 

1:50 p.m. End of Memorial 

Reception to Follow 

Musical selections also provided by the Amherst Area Gospel Choir 

Bio of John H. Bracey, Jr. 

John H. Bracey, Jr., was a leading figure in the fields of African American Studies and U.S. History. His primary academic interests were African social and cultural history, radical ideologies and movements, and the history of African American women. He was also focused on the interactions between African Americans and Native Americans, Afro-Latinx, and Jewish Americans. 

Professor Bracey was born on July 17, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Washington D.C. where his mother taught in the Howard University School of Education. He attended Howard University and Roosevelt University in Chicago (B.A. 1964). He did graduate work both at Roosevelt and at Northwestern University. During his decade in Chicago (1961-71), Professor Bracey was active in the Civil Rights, Black Liberation and Peace movements as a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Chicago Friends of SNCC, ACT, SDS, and the Revolutionary Action Movement. 

Professor Bracey was a member of the faculty of the W.E B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst since 1972 serving twice as department chair. On the UMass campus, Professor Bracey was a tireless supporter of Black student initiatives, organizations, and cultural activities and a significant initiator of programming that contributes significantly to the diverse cultural and educational life of our campus. In keeping with the family tradition, he was an influential teacher who mentored countless undergraduates and dozens of Ph.D. and M.A. students. 

One of Professor Bracey’s major contributions to the field was making primary documents and other keys sources of African American history and culture available to scholars, teachers, students, and the general public. Professor Bracey co-edited several volumes with the late August Meier and the late Elliott Rudwick including Black Nationalism in America (1970), eight volumes in the series Explorations in the Black Experience. Also with August Meier and Sharon Harley Professor Bracey co-edited the microfilm series Black Studies Research Sources, which included the Papers of the NAACP, A. Phillip Randolph, Mary McLeod Bethune, Horace Mann Bond, Amiri Baraka, Robert F. Williams, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. With colleagues at UMass Professor Bracey co-edited African American Women and the Vote: 1837-1965 (1997), with Marianne Adams, Strangers and Neighbors: Relations Between Blacks and Jews in the United States (1999) and with Manisha Sinha the two volume African American Mosaic: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to the Twenty-First Century (2004) and with Sonia Sanchez and James Smethurst, SOS: Calling All Black People: A Black Arts Movement Reader (2014). His recent writings display his enormous range of interests and competencies, from an award-winning essay on the musician John Coltrane in the Massachusetts Review to his contribution to a 2019 Furious Flower (a major institution for the presentation and the study of Black poetry) anthology. 

Professor Bracey consulted on and appeared in video productions of the lives of W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, A. Phillip Randolph, and Sonia Sanchez as well as in the NAACP, 1964 and Tim Wise's White Like Me. A lecture by Professor Bracey "How Racism Harms White Americans" was produced by Sut Jhally's Media Education Project in 2013. He frequently lectured and led classes and seminars in community settings and prisons as well as on campuses across the United States. 

He was an important presence in various disciplinary organizations in African American Studies and History, especially the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (which not long ago held a plenary tribute to Dr. Bracey's contributions to ASALH and the field of African American History) and the Organization of American Historians. Professor Bracey was a life member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and of the Organization of American Historians participating in the latter's Distinguished Lecturers Program. For many years, Professor Bracey, along with the eminent historian Darlene Clark Hine, led a job search workshop at the ASALH annual meeting. He received awards from ASALH as well as the National Council of Black Studies and numerous campus and community organizations. In the Spring, 2013 the College of Wooster granted Professor Bracey an honorary degree "Doctor of Humane Letters.” He also was a consultant to the setting up of undergraduate and graduate programs in African American/Africana Studies. 

In 1966, Professor Bracey married his first wife, Jessica Elaine Swain, with whom he had his daughter, Kali. He then married Ingrid Patricia-Ann Babb in 1975 and had two sons, Bryan and John. Professor Bracey also had a passion for the arts. He loved jazz and was even a drummer—congas in particular. He enjoyed painting and turning pieces of wood that he found into works of art. He often took his children to see sporting events. Above all else, he was a caring father and grandfather, who was happiest when he was surrounded by his grandchildren. He was known for his intelligence, generosity, infectious smile, and kind and compassionate heart. Professor Bracey was preceded in death by his father, John, his mother, Helen, and his first wife, Jessica. He is survived by his wife Ingrid; his three children, Kali, Bryan, and John; his sister Constance; six grandchildren and many nieces, nephews, and cousins. May he live in our memories, always.