about me
In addition to my community work, I currently serve as Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Throughout my academic tenure, my research has focused on comparative, economic analysis of slavery, industrialization, and suburbanization, and globalization since 1750, with a specific emphasis on using historic preservation to lead reinvestment campaigns in small towns- of which continues to influence my community-based work today.
Over the past decade, I have published six books, including my two latest, Industrial Segregation and Cities Imagined: The African Diaspora in Media and History (both Kendall-Hunt Publishers). Other books include Suburban Erasure: How Suburbanization Ended the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press); The Path to Freedom: Black Families in New Jersey (The History Press); The Land Speaks (Oxford University Press), The Encyclopedia of Black Comics (Fulcrum); The American Economy (Kendall-Hunt Publishers); and Planning Future Cities (Kendall-Hunt Publishers). Additionally, I was named one of “Today’s Black History Makers” by The Philadelphia Daily News
In addition to my regular posts on my social media channels, I have written more than one hundred additional academic articles and essays on topics spanning race in the media, race relations, democracy, capitalism, digital markets, and community uplift. My work has appeared in the Huffington Post, National Public Radio, and The Atlantic among other popular, professional and scholarly journals.
Noted as one of the most prominent historians, educators, and urbanists in the United States, I have served as a keynote speaker and presenter at numerous conferences, symposiums and exhibitions across the country and internationally (United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand); and have trained corporate, government, entertainment, media, law enforcement, military, and medical industry professionals on strategies for dismantling racism in their institutions. Dr. Greason has provided anti-racism training to educators and administrators nationwide.
From 2007-2012, I advised Building One America, the coalition that designed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009). I also served as the President of the T. Thomas Fortune Foundation, an organization that saved the National Historic Landmark dedicated to the leading, militant journalist of the nineteenth century and advances his legacy today.
My digital humanities projects, “The Wakanda Syllabus” and “The Racial Violence Syllabus”, produced global responses in the last three years. In the wake of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, “The Racial Violence Syllabus” attracted over 4 million individual uses, was translated into seven languages, and inspired projects like the Oscar-winning film “BlackKklansman.” The 2016 “Wakanda Syllabus” defined Afrofuturism as one of the core themes of media convergence and was a crucial element in the public acclaim that supported Marvel Studios’ Oscar-winning feature film, “Black Panther.” In addition to my community-based programs, I currently write about the racial wealth gap and the patterns of economic globalization.
I graduated from Villanova University in 1995 before completing his doctoral research on suburbanization at Temple University in 2004. My social justice work began with training by Otty Nxumalo, Director-General of KwaZulu-Natal under Nelson Mandela, and has continued through projects with Maya Angelou, Cornel West, Toni Morrison, Desmond Tutu, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Robin D.G. Kelley, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Ken Bain, Dwayne McDuffie, Christopher Priest, Ruha Benjamin, John Jennings, David Blight, James Oliver Horton, Angel David Nieves, and Kim Gallon.
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