Sundiata Cha-Jua

Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, from which he earned a Ph.D. in 1993, and in African American Studies. He previously taught in the History department and directed the Black Studies Program at the University of Missouri at Columbia, and was the first faculty member hired in the new Department of African American Studies at Pennsylvania State University (1994) and Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Dr. Cha-Jua received Advanced Certificates in Black Studies from Northeastern University in 1992 and from the National Council for Black Studies, Director’s Institute in 1992.

Dr. Cha-Jua's research agenda consists of explorations of  Black racial formations, African American historiography, African Amercan community-building, Radical Black Intellectual Traditions, the Black Liberation movement, and culturally relevant pedagogical practices. He is specifically interested in investigating African American community formation, lynching and racial terrorism, historical materialism, and social movement theory.

He is the author of America's First Black Town, Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830-1915 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), the monograph, Sankofa: Racial Formation and Transformation, Toward a Theory of African American History(Washington State University, 2000), and co-edited Race Struggles (University of Illinois Press, 2009) with Theodore Koditschek and Helen Neville and co-edited Reparations and Reparatory Justice: Past, Present and Future. University of Illinois Press, 2024 with Mary Frances Berry and V.P. Franklin. He has published scores of articles in leading journals, including The Black Scholar, Journal of African American History, Journal of American History, Journal of Urban History, New Politics and Souls. He coauthored, “The 'Long Movement' as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies” in the Journal of African American History which co-won the 2009 OAH EBSCOhost America: History and Life Award for the best journal article in United States History, 2007-2009.

His new book project, tentatively titled, Our History is Lie Our Hair, Nappy is under contract with the University of Illinois Press. He is also working on two other book projects, a collection of essays entitled, "Rising Waters": Explorations in Radical Black History and a volume of Harold Baron's work with Lou Turner tentatively tited, Through a Plate Glass Darkly: Studies in Racial Transformation by Harold Baron. It is under review with University of Illinois Press.

Cha-Jua was President of the National Council for Black Studies (201-2012, 2012-2014) and is in his third three-year term as a member of the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. He has served as Senior Editor of The Black Scholar (2011-2015), Associate Editor of the Journal of African American History (2015-2018) and a Contributing Editor onThe Black Scholar (2005-2015) and the Journal of Black Studies (2004-2015) and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of African American Studies (2006-2014). Cha-Jua is a Life member of the National Council for Black Studies and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

Dr. Cha-Jua is a founding scholar/trainer of the Policing in a Multiracial Society Program (PSMP). Started in 2012, PSMP provides systematic anti-racial bias education and training for police recruits attending the University of Illinois’s Police Training Institute (PTI) and researches the racial attitudes of police and the effectiveness of anti-racist training.

Since September 2015, Cha-Jua has written a biweekly Op-Ed commentary, “RealTalk: A Black Perspective” for the News Gazette of Champaign, Illinois. He also is founding member of Black Liberation Media and does a bi-weekly podcast, "RealTalk: History as a Weapon for Black Liberation for the network.

He has been engaged with local and national Black liberation movement organizations since his teen years. He has been a member of the executive board of the St. Louis-based Organization for Black Struggle (OBS), a member of the National Council of the Black Radical Congress (BRC) and served on National Council of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). he is currenty a member of the Ubuntu Project CU and is a member of its Leadership Team.