Remembering Kevin Mumford

It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of Kevin Mumford, professor of history in the Department of History.

 

Kevin joined the Department of History in 2012 and was an expert in African American History, Race Relations, History of Sexuality, and Urban History. His research focused on race, politics, and sexuality in modern America, and how struggles over social difference and belonging unfolded in cities and institutions. He authored important books such as Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (Columbia University Press, 1997), Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America (New York University Press, 2007), and Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis (University of North Carolina Press, 2016).

 

Kevin’s scholarship was recognized for its important contributions to African American History, Gay History, and in Critical Race Studies by numerous organizations and foundations. He was named a Fellow by Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research (1999), a Schomburg Fellow at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (2003, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities), a Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University (2008-09), a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Erfurt Universitait in Germany (2011-12), a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2021-22), and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow (2021). His published works were selected as prize winners for their insightful examination of the intersections of African American history, the Civil Rights Movement, Gay liberation, and urban politics in the twentieth century. In 2012, he received the Binkley-Stephenson Award from the Organizations of American Historians for the best article in the Journal of American History in the preceding year. He also received the 2012 Audre Lorde Prize for the outstanding article on LGBT history in the past two years from the GLBTH Committee of the American Historical Association. His 2016 book Not Straight, Not White received the 2017 Bonnie and Vern Bullough Book Award from the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. The American Library Association also named Not Straight, Not White as a 2016 Stonewall Honor Book.

 

He was working on his next book project, The Strange Career of Hate: Bias Crime and the Politics of Diversity which traces the anti-hate movement back to the end of the civil rights campaign when Black and liberal legislators pushed for the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990.

 

Kevin was known for his commitment to teaching and researching the history of people often marginalized in the story of the United States during the twentieth century. He produced a number of public-facing projects that aimed to illuminate the lessons of Stonewall then and now, queering African American history, and show the importance of engaging LGBT history at the center of American history. He served a term as Director of Graduate Studies in the department and on several committees on the college and campus levels. He also lent his expertise to award and prize committees for the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association.

 

This is a tragic loss for the department and for everyone who worked with and knew Kevin.  

 

We will share details for planned services if and when they become available.

 

And, if you would benefit from talking with someone, please know that there are Faculty/Staff Assistance Services available to you.