EP #247 - 03.26.2021 - Historically Black Colleges: Universities and Public Health in Nashville

Today is a discussion of Historically Black Colleges/Universities and Public Health in Nashville with Andrea Ringer, Learotha

Williams, and A. Hannibal Leach.

Dr. A. Hannibal Leach is the Interim Assistant Dean of the School of Humanities and Behavioral Social Sciences of Fisk University. He is also an Assistant Professor of Political Science and director of the African American Studies program.  He is the author of The Social Context of Public Opinion and Foreign Policy, which explores the role social identity plays in shaping mass attitudes toward U.S. foreign policy. His current research uses computational methods to understand how critical race theory helps to explain political phenomena in the context of international politics and amongst American political leadership. Dr. Leach also authors a tri-monthly publication known as the Leach Political Report. The publication provides an informed Black perspective on political issues concerning the American South.

Andrea Ringer is an Atlantic World scholar at TSU, with a focus on the history of transnational workers. Her current project asks questions about the circus as a workplace and the history of its migrant laborers.  Using more than a dozen archives from across the country, interviews, trade journals, and hundreds of local newspapers, her work explores how the relevancy of the circus depended on the blurred lines between worker and performer.  Her previous publications explore punitive justice and prison privatization, and she currently has two articles on circus workers currently in revision.  “’Because it is cheaper and better’: 1980s Corrections Policies and Prison Privatization in Tennessee,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Summer 2018.

Learotha Williams, Jr., PhD. is a scholar of African American, Civil War and Reconstruction, and Public History at Tennessee State University.  

Dr. Williams has worked as a Historic Sites Specialist for the State of Florida, acted as coordinator of the African American Studies Program at Armstrong Atlantic State University, and served as a trustee of the Historic Savannah Foundation in Savannah, Georgia.

At TSU, he coordinates the North Nashville Heritage Project, an effort that seeks to encourage a greater understanding of the history of North Nashville, including but not limited to Jefferson Street and its historic relationship to the greater Nashville community.

His most recent publication is a work he coedited with Amie Thurber entitled, I'll Take You There: Exploring Nashville's Sites of Social Justice which will be published by Vanderbilt University Press in April 2021.