The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Department of History and Africana Studies program announced that Dr. Michael Vinson Williams will join the UTC community in August as a professor of history and director of Africana Studies.
Williams comes to UTC from the University of Texas at El Paso, where he has spent the last eight years as a professor of history and director of UTEP’s African American Studies program.
Dr. Michael Williams
“This appointment represents a major milestone for the Africana Studies program at UTC, which first offered a minor in Black Studies in 1988 in response to sustained student demand,” said Dr. Julia Cummiskey, UC Foundation assistant professor of history and the interim director of Africana Studies at UTC.
The search committee for the national search included faculty from the history department and faculty and staff from other departments who served on the Africana Studies Advisory Committee.
“Dr. Williams impressed the committee, the history department and other individuals who met him on campus with his enthusiasm for program building and his passion for student success and community engagement,” Cummiskey said.
“We are very excited about the work Dr. Williams will do here at UTC for the history department, the Africana Studies program, the University and the greater Chattanooga community.”
Williams, who is slated to visit UTC to give a public talk at 3:30 p.m. on April 18, said he was intrigued about the Africana Studies program’s dedication to student involvement and community outreach.
“When I looked at UTC, I was really impressed by the mission and I was impressed by the institution—but more importantly, I was impressed by the Africana Studies program and its commitment to student engagement, student development and community outreach,” he said, “and I thought this was an opportunity to get in with a program that’s really on the rise and then see how I could add to that as well.
“I was looking at the profile, the student body, the community outreach, the partnerships that you have with the Bessie Smith Museum … those types of partnerships, those types of commitments to students and commitment to the community all spoke to everything that I do and I believe, so I thought this was an opportunity to hopefully add to that.”
Williams described himself as passionate with a commitment to humanity.
“I’m very much driven by students, very much driven by community, very much driven by how I can add to what people are doing,” he said, “and so when I say humanity, that’s that human element in people; it’s always been a part of who I am as a person.
“I bring passion with me. I bring commitment with me. I bring an understanding of the importance of academic outreach and what it means to be a part of the whole. My objective is never to go into the community and preach about what it is I can do to change, but rather go in the community and say, ‘This is who I am. This is what I know. How can I help do what it is that you all are doing? How can I be a part of what you are?’
“That’s who I am, and that’s the same approach I have with students. I come into the classroom and I come into these organizations that students are part of and I want to add to what they’re doing. I want to add to that body of knowledge, but I also want to learn from them as well. It has to be a symbiotic relationship.”
The recipient of three history degrees from the University of Mississippi (bachelor’s in 2000, master’s in 2004, Ph.D. in 2007), Williams was a member of the Mississippi State University faculty from 2008-2013 before joining Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2013 as dean of the Division of Social Sciences. He then moved to UTEP in 2016.
He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and chapters in edited collections and a monograph titled “Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr,” published by University of Arkansas Press in 2013.
Williams is a member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and the National Council for Black Studies and has served on numerous committees and boards—including the Medgar Wiley Evers 60th Commemoration Events Planning Committee and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Scholars Program Selection Committee.
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