Our Caucus

Bala Baptiste, Ph.D.
Contact: bbaptiste@miles.edu
Dr. Bala Baptiste is a professor of mass communication and Chairperson of the Division of Communications at Miles College. He earned his MA in Journalism from the University of Mississippi, and his Ph.D. in Mass Communication from Indiana University. Baptiste is the outgoing Chairperson of the African American and Civil Rights Caucus. His research concerns the intersection of African Americans, mass media, and history. His mainstream articles appeared in the Atlanta Constitution, Times Picayune, and the Birmingham Post-Herald, among others.

Emily Bibb
Contact: ecbibb@gmail.com
Emily Bibb is the Digital Archivist at Birmingham Black Radio Museum, managing and maintaining the BBRM’s online collections since 2015. She is also Curator of Prints at Boston Public Library and has a MLIS and MA in Museum Studies.

Micaela di Leonardo, Ph.D.
Contact: L-DI@northwestern.edu
Dr. Micaela di Leonardo is Professor Emerita of Anthropology, African American Studies, Gender/Sexuality Studies, and Performance Studies at Northwestern University. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and has taught at Berkeley, Yale, and Oberlin as well as Northwestern. di Leonardo has published six books and more than four dozen articles, across studies of race/ethnicity, /gender/sexuality, and urban life/political economy/history of thought in the US and globally. Her most recent book is Black Radio/Black Resistance: The Life and Times of the Tom Joyner Morning Show, (Oxford, 2019). She is now writing A New Haven State of Mind, a multi-decade ethnography of political economy and public culture in New Haven Connecticut.

Teisha Dupree-Wilson, J.D., Ph.D. AACRC Chairperson
Contact: tdupree-wilson@coppin.edu
Dr. Teisha Dupree-Wilson is a professor of History and African American Studies at Coppin State University and currently serves as the Chairperson of the African American and Civil Rights Caucus. She earned her BA in history from Howard University, her law degree from Northwestern California University School of Law, and her MA and Ph.D. in History from Morgan State University. Her research interests center on the role of black radio in supporting civil rights activism in the United States. Her most recent publications include, “Phenotypic Proximity: Colorism and Intraracial Discrimination Among Blacks in the United States and Brazil, 1928-1988″ and “The Evolution of African American Radio” for Oxford University’s Research Encyclopedia of American History. Dr. Dupree-Wilson is also a member of the HBCU Radio Preservation Project Advisory Group.

Sarah Florini, Ph.D.
Contact: sarah.florini@asu.edu
Dr. Sarah Florini is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of English and the Associate Director of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at Arizona State University. She holds a doctorate in Communication and Culture from Indiana University. She researches the intersection of race and technology, and her work has appeared in New Media and Society, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Television and New Media, and Transformative Works and Cultures. Her book Beyond Hashtags: Racial Politics and Black Digital Networks is available through NYU Press.

Bob Friedman
Contact: bobby3d@bellsouth.net
Bob Friedman has been Director of the Birmingham Black Radio Museum (thebbrm.org) since its founding in 1992. Friedman spent 22 years on the air at Birmingham’s WJLD, has numerous awards and contributed to many other publications and films, including the 2005 Academy Award winning “Mighty Times-the Children’s March.” A quartet singer for decades, Friedman is currently overseeing the installation of a permanent BBRM exhibit at the historic Carver Theatre in Birmingham’s National Civil Rights Monument district.

Angela Greene
Contact: Angelakgreene@outlook.com
Angela Greene is a media professional, author, and advocate. She was an on-air talent for WCLK twice, WFOX, WALR twice, WSB-FM, WVEE, the traffic anchor for the Tom Joyner Morning Show, WPGN, and WAOK. Presently she is the executive producer of the number show on WAOK, and she is the writer, producer, and host of Jazz Flavors. She is a board member for Black Women in Radio. Ms. Greene has a BA degree in English (Rhetoric/Composition) and a MS degree in Administration of Justice and Security.

Aaron Johnson, Ph.D.
Contact: draj@pitt.edu
Dr. Aaron J. Johnson is an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh where he studies and teaches jazz, funk, film music, and MIR (music information retrieval). He studies social aspects of how music is produced, organized, and presented, the efforts of musicians to counter powerful institutional forces, and how musicians use media of all kinds. A professional jazz musician born and raised in Washington, DC during the apex of the Chocolate City era, he has electrical engineering degrees from Carnegie Mellon (BSEE) and Georgia Tech (MS) and a Ph.D. in Music from Columbia University. He plays trombone, tuba, bass clarinet, and conch shells. The many musicians with whom he has performed or recorded include Jimmy Heath, Wallace Roney, Steve Turre, Victor Gould, Charles Tolliver, McCoy Tyner, Pharoah Sanders, Jay-Z, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight (with and without the Pips), Oliver Lake, Muhal Richard Abrams, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, and the Mingus Big Band. His forthcoming book (2024) from the Illinois University Press is titled Jazz Radio America.

Felèsha Love
Contact: feleshalove@gmail.com
Felèsha Love is a multimedia professional, educator, published author, and veteran radio broadcaster. She has worked at WESL (East St. Louis), KATZ/Z100 (St. Louis), WIZF (Erlanger), WBLZ (Cincinnati), WAOK, KISS 104, WSB, WGST, V 103, STAR 94, and HOT 97 (Atlanta). Love is founder of the Atlanta based organization Black Women in Radio (BWIR), and curator of the BWIR National Historical Collection. A former Spelman College faculty member of 8 years, Love has an MBA in Project Management from Walden University, and a BS in Mass Communications Media from Lindenwood University. Currently, she’s spearheading a joint standing project called Radio LEGENDS: The Evolution and Legacy of Black Radio Culture. https://atomic-temporary-97479716.wpcomstaging.com/projects/

Brenda Nelson-Strauss
Contact: bnelsons@indiana.edu
Brenda Nelson-Strauss is Head of Collections at the Archives of African American Music and Culture at Indiana University. She is the founding editor of the online music review site Black Grooves, and a co-author of the “Library of Congress National Recorded Sound Preservation Plan.” She received the Music Library Association’s A. Ralph Papakhian Award in 2014 for extraordinary service to the profession, and the 2015 Association for Recorded Sound Recording Collections Distinguished Service Award.

Arionne Nettles
Contact: arionne.nettles@northwestern.edu
Arionne Nettles is a lecturer and director of audio journalism programming at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. As a culture reporter in print and audio, her stories often look into Chicago history, culture, gun violence, policing and race and class disparities. Nettles was recently deputy editor at nonprofit civic media organization City Bureau and worked as a digital producer at WBEZ where she ran the daily digital desk. She helped develop a new collaboration with NPR’s digital team and was the host of WBEZ’s first video interview series. Nettles obtained her BA and MBA degrees from Florida A&M University and an MS in Journalism degree from Medill. Nettles is a proud member of the National Association of Black Journalists and works to teach Chicago-area teens the power of words through her organization, Write Chicago.

Robert B. Riter, Ph.D.
Contact: rbriter@ua.edu
Dr. Robert B. Riter is a faculty member in The University of Alabama School of Library and Information Studies, where he coordinates the school’s archival studies program. His research concerns topics in archival history, book history, and community focused collecting. Additionally, he regularly works with Alabama based community memory institutions, including the Birmingham Black Radio Museum (BBRM).

Jocelyn Robinson
Contact: jrobinson@wyso.org
Jocelyn Robinson is Director of Radio Preservation and Archives at WYSO. She is a Yellow Springs, OH-based educator, media producer, and radio preservationist. Robinson holds a BA in Art History from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and a Masters in Cultural Studies from Antioch University. She currently directs the HBCU Radio Preservation Project, funded by the Mellon Foundation.

Laura Beth Schnitker, Ph.D.
Contact: lschnitk@umd.edu
Dr. Laura Schnitker is a curator and audiovisual archivist in the Mass Media & Culture archives at the University of Maryland Libraries. She is responsible for managing, preserving, and improving access to archival collections related to broadcast history, designing and implementing AV digitization and digital humanities projects, and collaborating with other partner institutions. She earned a BM in clarinet performance from the University of Michigan, an MA in Ethnomusicology from Tufts University, and a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland where she also serves as a lecturer in the School of Music. Her research interests include popular music, college and community radio, African-American music, and the history of recorded sound. She also co-chairs the College, Community and Educational Radio Caucus for the Radio Preservation Task Force and serves as an executive committee member for the “Legends: The Evolution and Legacy of Black Radio” project. She hosts The Bohemian Challenge every Thursday at 10am on campus radio station WMUC-FM.

Guha Shankar, Ph.D.
Contact: gshankar@loc.gov
Dr. Guha Shankar is Folklife Specialist at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. At the Center he is involved in a range of public outreach programs, including multi-media productions and documentation efforts, such as the Civil Rights History Project, and the lectures, symposia, and concert series. His research interests and publications include issues surrounding intangible cultural heritage and intellectual property for indigenous communities, cultural politics and performance in the Caribbean and developments in the field of ethnographic media production and preservation. Shankar earned his Ph.D. in 2003 from the Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, with a concentration in Folklore and Public Culture. Prior to undertaking graduate studies at the University, Shankar was Media Production Specialist and documentary film producer at the Center for Folklife Programs at the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (1985-1993).

Ron Singleton
Contact: rsmike51@gmail.com
Ron Singleton is a veteran broadcaster, community activist, and educator, with over 40 years of experience in radio. He earned his BA degree from the University of Mississippi and is currently pursuing a MS degree in Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC). He was the first African American to host a radio talk show on a white New Orleans, LA radio station – WSMB. In addition to WSMB, he has worked on-air at WWL in New Orleans, WVON in Chicago, WNIS in Norfolk, Virginia, and as Program and Development Director for Norfolk State University’s WNSB-FM (now Hot 91 FM). He is the owner and President of DesMurat, LLC, a radio content developer and is committed to assist formerly incarcerated federal prisoners in their transition to becoming successfully reintegrated citizens.

Suzanne E. Smith, Ph.D.
Contact: smisuze@gmu.edu
Dr. Suzanne E. Smith received her Ph.D. from Yale University. She specializes in African American history with a particular interest in exploring how the history of African American entrepreneurship can transform our understanding of African American culture. Her current research agenda focuses on the history of African American religion in modern America. Her first book, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (Harvard University Press, 1999), examines Motown and its relationship to the black community of Detroit and the civil rights movement. Professor Smith has done numerous interviews for National Public Radio, C-Span, and the BBC as well as public lectures at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Berklee College of Music, and the National Funeral Directors Association Annual Meeting. She has also contributed to various public history projects and documentary films including Boss: The Black Experience in Business (PBS, 2019) and Hitsville: The Making of Motown (Showtime, 2019).

Katea Stitt
Contact: kstitt@wpfw.org
Katea Stitt is a performing arts producer and founder of Anyanwu Management, which offers event, tour, and artist management services. Since 1991, she has hosted Beyond Borders, a weekly Jazz/World Music program on DC Pacifica station WPFW. From 1999 until 2004, Ms. Stitt was a historian and coordinator for the Smithsonian Institution’s Jazz Oral History Program. She is currently Program Director for Washington DC’s legendary “jazz & justice” radio station, Pacifica radio station WPFW, and the Tour Manager for singing ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock. Ms. Stitt is a graduate of Georgetown University.

Amiri Tulloch
Contact: amiritulloch@gmail.com
Amiri Tulloch is a multimedia journalist and educator from Central New Jersey, with a passion for creative reporting through audio, writing, photo, and video. In his work, Amiri covers Black art, education, and community histories. As an educator, Amiri is entering his third year as a Radio Journalism Instructor at the Schomburg Center in Harlem. In 2022, Amiri graduated with a BA degree in African American Studies from Columbia University, where he was a student leader, producer, and historian at WKCR-FM. Amiri’s research focused on hip-hop radio in New York City and New Jersey during the 1990s.

Karen M. Turner, J.D.
Contact: karen.turner@temple.edu
Karen M. Turner is an Associate Professor and Director of the Broadcast Journalism Concentration in the Department of Journalism at Temple University. She has also worked as an American Bar Association Staff Director, Philadelphia mayoral press secretary for former Mayor Ed Rendell, a broadcast journalist, and a talk radio interviewer. Turner has worked at many stations, including WMGK/WPEN (Philadelphia), WMGQ/WCTC (NJ), WWRC (Long Island and Washington, DC), and WIZF-FM (Cincinnati, Ohio). She has degrees from Dartmouth College, Northwestern University School of Law, and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Brian Ward, Ph.D.
Contact: brian.ward@northumbria.ac.uk
Dr. Brian Ward is a Professor in American Studies at Northumbria University, having previously held chairs at the Universities of Manchester and Florida. From 2016-2019 he served as Chair of the British Association for American Studies. A specialist in the history and culture of the US South, the African American experience, US popular music and radio, the 1960s, and Anglo-American cultural relations, he has published numerous articles and eleven books. Dr. Ward’s books include, Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South, and A&R Pioneers: Architects of American Roots Music on Record which won the Belmont University Award for Best Book on Country Music.

Sonja D. Williams
Contact: swilliams@howard.edu
Sonja D. Williams is a professor and former chair of the Howard University Department of Media, Journalism and Film in the Cathy Hughes School of Communications in Washington, DC. Also, she is a Peabody Award-winning radio documentarian who has produced numerous programs for National Public Radio (NPR), Public Radio International (PRI), the Smithsonian Institution and local radio stations nationwide. Her credits include serving as a writer/producer for the NPR/Smithsonian Institution radio series, Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions (1994), along with the Smithsonian Productions series Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was (1996) and Jazz Singers (2001). Her biography about a National Radio Hall of Fame pioneer titled, Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom (2015), was published by the University of Illinois Press. To learn more about Williams, visit http://www.sonjadwilliams.com.