Director of Black Studies, Cleveland State University
A devoted educator, Dr. Michael Williams has dedicated his career to exploring African American history. He especially enjoys discussing events that took place between 1620 and 1978, with his students at Cleveland State University. The first date marks the beginning of Africans being transported to be enslaved in the Americas; the latter date speaks volumes about the present-day problems that have befallen a community that thought their ills in America would end with the Civil Rights Movement.
“In 1978, when Ronald Reagan was elected president, he did a masterful job in moving us from collective thought to individual thought,” says Williams, who is the director of the university’s Black Studies Program. “He moved us from working together as a people to working on our own behalf.”
Since taking over the program as the interim director in 2002 and becoming director in 2004, Williams has instituted various programs and curriculum intiatives to offer factual information about the black experience.
“There are very few students who actually learn anything about themselves,” he says. “Black studies is another voice at the table to look at things from a different perspective, an alternative perspective.”
With a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh, Williams says education’s greatest enemy is ignorance. “We get a war report in cities every day. We know how many brothers get killed, wounded, sick [and] what happens to our missing children,” he says. “Until we get out of the mind-set that we’re not in a struggle, we’re going to continue to struggle.” – gavin philip godfrey
