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Marcus & Amy Jacques Garvey
March 19, 2022 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT

Dr. Ronald Stephens will draw from his most recent edited work on Marcus Garvey but will pay particular attention to the role in which Amy Jacques Garvey played in assisting her husband in the growth of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League.
Ronald J. Stephens (Ph.D., Temple University, 1996) is a Professor of African American Studies and an affiliate with American Studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University. He is a community-based researcher and 20th century African American historian, as well as former director of Purdue’s African American Studies and Research Center. Ronald’s major research interests involve black leisure, recreation, and issues of sustainability in Idlewild, Michigan, local Garveyism, civil rights/black power studies, and rural and urban farming in northern black communities.
He is the author of Idlewild: The Rise, Decline and Rebirth of a Unique African American Resort Town (University of Michigan Press, 2013); Idlewild: The Black Eden of Michigan (Arcadia Publishing, 2001); African Americans of Denver (Arcadia Publishing, 2008), as well as lead coeditor along with Adam Ewing of Global Garveyism (University Press of Florida, 2019). He is also the author of several groundbreaking local studies on the Garvey movement in the United States, and other topics involving 20th century African American history and culture that have been published in the Journal of Black Studies, Black Scholar, and Black Diaspora Review.
Owing to his national reputation as an Idlewild scholar, Ronald has appeared on and been cited in public programs, including Idlewild: The Real Thing (an edition of Tony Brown’s Journal), Idlewild (an NPR production), Idlewild: Rebuilding Paradise (a Flint’s ABC 12 Special program), Are We There Yet? Americans on Vacation (a History Channel program), Idlewild, Michigan: A Black Historical Resort (Milwaukee’s Black Nouveau series), and Historic African American Towns (a High Noon Productions for Home and Gardens Television).
Dr. Ronald Stephens is currently working on Robert Franklin and Mabel R. Williams Speaks: Matrimonial and Political Partnership in African American Resistance History, 1925-2016; and Showcasing Black Womanhood: Larry Steele’s Smart Affairs (University of Georgia Press).