Items

• Film: Cheryl Clarke: The Project of Transformation
• Interview: Busia, Abena, 2015

  Founding member of the Center for Women's Global Leadership and Center for African Studies, Abena Busia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies and the Department of English at Rutgers. She is also co-director and co-editor of the groundbreaking Women Writing Africa Project, a multi-volume anthology published by the Feminist Press at CUNY. Busia articulates the significance of communities and leadership at Rutgers and describes negotiating a space within Rutgers to consider women's experiences, blackness, and African womanness. She emphasizes the value of a single-sex education and describes Douglass as a place for nurturing women's leadership.
• Interview: Clarke, Cheryl, 2012

  Cheryl Clarke is a black lesbian feminist whose poetry, editorial work, and career at Rutgers have had a significant impact on black, lesbian, and women’s communities. She is the author of four collections of poetry, often centered around themes of black women’s issues and lesbian issues. She served as an editor of the lesbian publication Conditions for nine years and began working at Rutgers University in 1970. At Rutgers, she served as the founding Director of Diverse Community Affairs and Lesbian/Gay Concerns, which became the Office of Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities in 2004. She was the Dean of Students of Livingston Campus between 2009-2013 and retired from Rutgers in 2013 after 41 years of service. In this interview, Clarke discusses her upbringing in Washington, D.C. during the Civil Rights Movement, her passion for writing, and the role of feminism. Clarke proposes the idea that we, as a society, must be in the “project of transformation” to “create a new humanity” as we reconcile gender and race issues. --- See also an additional interview with Cheryl Clarke, recorded in 2018 by the Rutgers Oral History Archives.
• Interview: Clarke, Cheryl, 2018

  Cheryl Clarke was born on May 16, 1947 in Washington, D.C. Her father served in the U.S. Army in the Red Ball Express in France after the Allied invasion in June 1944. Growing up in Northwest Washington, D.C., Cheryl attended parochial schools, including Immaculate Conception Academy for high school. From 1965 to 1969, Cheryl attended Howard University and majored in English. During college, she worked part time at the Washington Post and at a Peace Corps office. In 1969, Cheryl came to Rutgers-New Brunswick as a graduate student in English. She earned her M.A. in English in 1974. Cheryl taught courses in the Urban University Program and discusses educational opportunity programs in the interview. From 1972 to 1974, she taught courses in the English Department at Rutgers. A life-long activist, Cheryl discusses her many experiences participating in social movements, including the anti-war and Black Power movements at Howard University, anti-apartheid activism at Rutgers, LGBT activism, feminism and lesbian-feminism, and activism surrounding the defense of Assata Shakur. From 1974 to 1978, Cheryl worked in Middlesex County in the Comprehensive Employment and Training Program. In 1978, she returned to Rutgers to study social work, obtaining her M.S.W. in 1980. In 1980, Cheryl began working in Student Affairs at Rutgers. In 1992, she served as the founding director of the Office of Diverse Community Affairs and Lesbian/Gay Concerns (now called the Center for Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities). From 2009 to 2013, Cheryl served as the Dean of Students for Livingston Campus. In 2000, she earned her Ph.D. in English. At Rutgers, Cheryl coordinated the university-wide Committee to Advance Our Common Purposes and the New Brunswick-wide Bias Prevention Education Committee, in addition to establishing the university-wide network of "Liaisons" and teaching numerous courses. Cheryl is the author of Narratives: Poems in the Tradition of Black Women (1982); Living as a Lesbian (1986); Humid Pitch (1989); Experimental Love (1993); After Mecca: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement (2005); and The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry, 1980-2005 (2006). From 1981 to 1990, she served as a member of the editorial collective of the feminist literary journal Conditions. In 2013, Cheryl retired after forty-one years at Rutgers. Cheryl and her partner Barbara Balliet co-own Blenheim Hill Books in Hobart, New York and organize the annual Hobart Festival of Women Writers.
• Interview: Cooper, Brittney, 2015

  Brittney Cooper is Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. She is a Black feminist theorist who specializes in the study of Black women’s intellectual history, Hip Hop generation feminism, and race and gender representation in popular culture. Dr. Cooper is also a sought-after public speaker and commentator, her work and words have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, TV Guide, the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show, All In With Chris Hayes, Disrupt with Karen Finney, and Third Rail on Al-Jazeera America, among many others. She is also a co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective, a popular feminist blog. Dr. Brittney Cooper is a proud alumna of Howard University (class of 2002) and a proud native of North Louisiana. In this interview, Dr. Cooper speaks about her day-to-day work as an Assistant Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies departments. Including her work as a “hip hop feminist” and the book she had just finished at the time "Race Women: Gender and the Making of a Black Public Intellectual Tradition"(published as: "Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women"). She continues with speaking about her experiences as a Black Woman in her field and the challenges she faces, the different types of activism she partakes in, and ends the interview speaking about her college experience and the lessons she has learned.
• Interview: Davis, Michellene, 2017

  Michellene Davis, Esq. is the President and CEO of National Medical Fellowships and former Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Barnabas Health. Davis is an Honors graduate of Seton Hall University and holds a Juris Doctorate from Seton Hall School of Law. She also received an Executive Education Certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility from the Harvard Business School and a Wharton Executive Education Certificate in Social Impact Strategy. Michellene Davis began her legal career as a trial litigator. She also served as Chief Policy Counsel to a former New Jersey Governor, where she was the first African American to serve in this position. Davis was the first African American and only the second women to serve as Acting New Jersey State Treasurer. Ms. Davis was the youngest person in state history to serve as Executive Director of the New Jersey Lottery and served as a senior policy advisor in the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services. While Acting State Treasurer of New Jersey, she founded the New Jersey Department of the Treasury's Office of Supplier Diversity and Division of Minority and Women-Owned Businesses. At Rutgers Davis served on the Institute for Women's Leadership's advisory board. In this interview Ms. Davis describes her childhood growing up in Camden, New Jersey, as well as the impact her father had on her life. She speaks about her transitions between the different professions she has had, her experiences as a woman leader, and the self doubt she has faced in various professions.
• Interview: Diallo, Dazon Dixon, 2013

  Dázon Dixon Diallo is a recognized visionary and advocate in the struggle for human rights, sexual and reproductive justice, especially in the fight against HIV, gender-based violence, and womxn's economic justice. Dázon is the Founder and President of SisterLove, and she is a Co-Founder and Principal in the Public Affairs & Communications firm, 14th Strategies. She is a proud member of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda Partnership, where she advocates for sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice in public health and prevention policies and programs. She is a member of several bodies of influence including the Women-At-Risk Subcommittee and the Scientific Advisory Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network, UNFPA Global Advisory Council, and a founding member of SisterSong Reproductive Justice Collective. Diallo serves on the IAPAC-Lancet HIV Commission on the Future of Urban HIV Response. She is the creator and convener of the Prevention Options for Womxn Advocacy & Research (POWAR) Partnership and WomxnNOW! Institute for SRHRJ for Girls & Womxn of African Descent worldwide. Dr.Diallo holds a master’s degree in public health from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (C’97) and both a bachelor’s degree and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Spelman College (C’86, C'2012). At Rutgers University Dr. Diallo served as the Blanche, Edith, and Irving Laurie Chair in Women’s Studies at Douglass Residential College. In this interview, Dr. Diallo speaks about her childhood in Georgia including the role models that helped shape her life. She also speaks about her college and career experiences, starting her nonprofit SisterLove, and the lack of diverse narratives that need to be discussed in the conversations surrounding HIV/AIDS.
• Interview: Ringgold, Faith, 2008

  Faith Ringgold began her artistic career more than fifty years ago as a painter. Today, she is best known for her painted story quilts – art that combines painting, quilted fabric and storytelling. She has exhibited in major museums in the USA, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She is in the permanent collection of many museums including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art. Her first book, Tar Beach was a Caldecott Honor Book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration, among numerous other honors. She has written and illustrated eleven children’s books. She has received more than seventy-five awards, fellowships, citations and honors, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship for painting, two National Endowment for the Arts Awards and seventeen honorary doctorates, one of which is from her alma mater The City College of New York. In this interview Ringgold begins with her childhood in Harlem, New York City, during the 1930s and the influences that impacted her life. She then addresses her experience during the Harlem Renaissance and struggles as a Black female artist, then moves on to her social activism within her art and the development of her mature style.