Interdisciplinary Collaborative Workshop - Participant Bios: Racial Justice Protests

Racial Justice Protests:

Participant Bios

Image credits: "Protest" by chaddavis.photography

Engaged Scholars

Bahiyyah Muhammad

Dr. Bahiyyah Muhammad is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Her educational background includes a B.S. in Administration of Justice from Rutgers University, a M.S. in Criminal Justice from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Rutgers University.
Dr. Muhammad’s research focuses on the criminal justice system and on the experiences of children of incarcerated parents. She is a renowned ethnographer and has worked with incarcerated populations across the globe. Her publications include: Corrections Today and Criminology: Understanding Crime and Criminals, as well as resources for children to understand their parents’ incarceration. In addition to her research, Dr. Muhammad teaches multiple courses at Howard University, including Inside Out, which is a course that takes university students into the prison system to learn alongside incarcerated people.

Celeste Lee

Celeste N. Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Spelman College where she teaches courses in Multivariate Analysis, Research Methodology, Race and Ethnic Relations, and Introduction to Sociology. Dr. Lee is an Atlanta native who completed her Ph.D. (with a specialization is Social Inequality and Race and Ethnic Relations) in Sociology at Emory University. She also holds a MAT (Social Studies) from Duke University. As a researcher, Dr. Lee is passionate about and committed to understanding the ways in which ethno-racial groups experience and understand racialization processes. Specifically, her research interests include racial and ethnic inequality, ideology, youth, education, and sociology of health and medicine. Ultimately, her research agenda aims to interrogate how race (and ethnicity) impacts people’s lived experiences, the relationship between racialized experiences and racial ideology, and lastly, groups’ understanding of broader racial dynamics. As a teacher, Dr. Lee is passionate about and committed to creating innovative and collaborative learning environments with students. Her goal is to promote an educational experience that introduces students to sociological concepts and research on a variety of levels in hopes that they will develop a sociological imagination to evaluate their lived experiences and the world around them. Ultimately, she aims to contribute to the development of global citizens who are prepared to serve as social change agents.

Adrienne Jones

Dr. Adrienne Jones is an Assistant Professor of Department of Political Science at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Her educational background includes a B.S. in Semiotics from Brown University, a J.D. in Law from the University of California-Berkeley, a M.A. in Political Science from the City University of New York Graduate Center and a Ph.D. in Political Science from City University of New York Graduate Center.
Dr. Jones’s research focuses on political policy that relates to the black experience, as well as the history and politics of black Americans. Currently, work from her Ph.D. thesis The Voting Rights Act Under Siege: The Development of the Influence of Colorblind Conservatism on the Federal Government and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is being adapted for publication in various research journals. At Morehouse College, Dr. Jones also teaches a variety of courses that focus on politics, race and law in the American context.

Rose Brewer

Dr. Rose M. Brewer is The Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor and past chairperson of the Department of African American & African Studies, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She holds affiliate appointments in Gender Women Sexuality Studies and Sociology. She received her M.A and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from Indiana University and did post doctoral studies at the University of Chicago. A social activist and scholar, Brewer publishes extensively on Black feminism, political economy, social movements, race, class, gender and social change. She is one of the authors of the award winning book, The Color of Wealth, a number of co- edited volumes including The U.S. Social Forum: Perspectives of a Movement; Bridges of Power: Women’s Multicultural Alliances and Is Academic Feminism Dead?: Theory in Practice. Her work includes more than 80 essays, articles, and refereed publications.
She held the University of North Texas Multicultural Lectureship Award, the Sociologist for Women in Society Feminist Lectureship in Social Change, a Wiepking Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Miami University of Ohio and was a 2013 scholar in the Social Justice Initiative, University of Illinois-Chicago and was a visiting scholar at the Havens Center-University of Wisconsin. She is a University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Medalist, a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, a 2013 winner of the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Teaching award, and a Josie R. Johnson Social Justice Award recipient. For a number of years Dr. Brewer directed the Minnesota ICGC Honors Program working with Spelman and Morehouse Colleges and other HBCUs.

Britany Gatewood

Dr. Britany Gatewood identifies as a Black queer woman scholar activist. Her research focuses on social movements within carceral institutions and the political practices and resistance of Black women and their children. She holds a postdoctoral position at Albany State University (fall 2020) and is an adjunct at George Washington University and Prince George’s Community College. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Howard University, M.A. from the University of Detroit Mercy, and B.A. from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

Student Activists

Sophia Howard

Sophia Howard is a Senior Comparative Women’s Studies major and Philosophy minor from Nashville, Tennessee, at Spelman College. While in college, she has studied extensively the intersections of white supremacy and patriarchy through the reproductive rights of incarcerated women. Through this study, Sophia has been led to create and work for organizations centered on supporting and advocating for incarcerated people. Sophia is a social justice fellow at Spelman College where she founded Unlocked Minds, a book club in Whitworth Women’s Facility, a minimum and medium-security prison in Hartwell, GA. She has hopes of cultivating a long-lasting relationship between the prison and Spelman College in order to eventually create a certificate program within the prison. Unlocked Minds currently has twenty-five women involved in the program and as it continues to grow there is a waitlist. Sophia is also the Vice President of Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity (URGE) at Spelman and is the lead organizer working to create the Spelman College Period Project. She is also the student leader of The Learning Club, an alternative sentencing and mentorship program at the Fulton County Juvenile Court, serving boys ages 12-17. While being the student leader as well as mentor Sophia has raised over $2,000 for the program, has developed the relationships between the court, the probation officers, and the mentors, as well as forming a better connection with parents, all with the intention to improve the support system of the boys that are in the program. She has interned for the American Civil Liberties Union, working on their Smart Justice campaign, a campaign geared towards minimizing incarceration in the state of Georgia by 50%. Sophia organized and facilitated community conversations in the form of town halls in three different counties in the state of Georgia. Last year Sophia was the first undergraduate intern for the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. While at EJI she worked primarily on the soil collection project, a project created to commemorate the lives of victims of lynching in the United States. Researching and writing about the lives of lynching victims as well as traveling to different lynching sites and attending community dedications, Sophia worked on crafting an honest narrative of white supremacy in the United States. Upon graduation from Spelman College, Sophia plans to attend law school in order to become a public interest attorney serving incarcerated citizens in the United States.

Aniyah Vines

Aniyah Vines is a rising junior of Howard University that resides in North Carolina by way of Brooklyn NY. Growing up, her family has always taught her the importance of justice, and made her aware of the inequalities in society. Her passion for justice was ignited upon her completion of the Justice and Injustice course led by Juror Doctor Nichad Davis during her experience as a 2016 Duke Tip scholar. Her passion became action after she and her family experienced the senseless murder of her cousin, Delrawn Smalls, who was killed by an off-duty police officer in Brooklyn. Since then she has engaged in various levels of community and social justice projects which includes creating the V.O.I.C.E. (Vision, Outspoken, Inspire, Create, Evolve) mentoring program, implementing and facilitating the Northwest School of the Arts (NWSA) Gun Violence Awareness walk-out, partnering as the program co-director for the Howard University Alternative Spring Break DC jail - Dr. Muhammad Experience 2019, participant in the DC Jail Day of Service 2018 and served as the documentarian for the DC Jail Celebrity Panel - Dr. Muhammad Experience. She currently serves as the NAACP Education Committee Chairwoman - Howard University Chapter and continues her volunteer and mentorship within various juvenile diversion programs in Charlotte NC. Currently she is embarking upon her personal vision of change through her non-profit organization T.R.A.P. (True Rehabilitation And Prosperity), which focuses on the implementation of strategic programming for youth that have been impacted directly and/or indirectly with the criminal justice system.
Aniyah also appreciates the arts and enjoys the artistic expression of song by using her vocal instrument through classical-opera and gospel music. Throughout her life she has found motivation from the drive and dedication shown by her mother, the support of her family, and the belief that one day her community will see themselves the way she has grown to see them...as royalty. Her aspiration is to become an attorney and continue her life's work of carrying the torch towards social justice work with the inspiration and mindset of those who came before her. “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” ~Angela Y. Davis

Qui Alexander

Qui Alexander (they/them, he/him) is a queer, trans, Black Puerto Rican scholar, educator, organizer, and consultant based in Minneapolis. He is currently a doctoral student in Education, Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Culture and Teaching at the University of Minnesota. Their work and scholarship centers queer Black feminist thought, transformative justice, abolition and healing justice. Believing the personal is political, their work strives to focus on personal liberation and healing to make movement work more sustainable.

Activists

Rahhel Haile

Rahhel is the co-founder and Executive Director of Policy and Program at the Minnesota Youth Collective and is dedicated to building the political power of young people. Throughout her career, she has prioritized co-organizing with young BIPOC without co-opting their movements. Her work in the community since George Floyd's murder has been focused on working with other community members around political education on abolition and policy when defunding the police.

Mary-Pat Hector

Mary-Pat Hector, born in Atlanta, is a graduate of Spelman College and a current graduate student at Georgia State University. At 22-years-old Mary-Pat Hector knows how to change the world. She began community organizing at the age of 12-years-old. By the age of 19, she became the youngest woman and person of color to run for public office in the state of Georgia, losing by only 22 votes.
Mary-Pat Hector serves as a Program Strategist at Rise, Inc; an organization led by more than 40,000 students and supporters from colleges and universities across the nation. She is also the Georgia Black Youth Vote coordinator. Mary-Pat has led and organized hunger strikes that have gained more than 75,000 meals for students at HBCUs, developing an initiative to end student hunger on college campuses. She has also organized rallies to end police violence in communities of color and, developed youth entrepreneurship programming that has assisted hundreds of young people to kickstart licensed businesses.
One of her proudest accomplishments is becoming a Fellow of Peace First. She was awarded the $50,000 fellowship for her national campaign call Think Twice a national campaign that educates youth on non-violence and other issues crippling her generation. Her national campaign provides teen-safety workshops for schools, trains teens and college students in many areas of youth advocacy techniques.
Not content to rest on her accomplishments, Mary-Pat speaks at high schools, colleges, conferences, women's events, and crisis shelters across the U.S. her story inspires, and her how-to strategies give young people their own road map for changing the world.

Tony Lewis Jr.

Tony Lewis Jr. is an author, activist , re-entry expert, community leader and champion for children with incarcerated parents. Mr.Lewis has fought relentlessly for the past 20 years to empower men, women, and children impacted by mass incarceration. His work and advocacy has been featured on CNN, BET, Elite Daily, The Breakfast Club , Black Enterprise , The Takeaway , Hot 97 and numerous times in the Washington Post. Mr. Lewis has been honored and recognized for his work in reentry , social justice, and community organizing both locally and nationally. He and his wife Jessica have 2 daughters Isabella and Sophie.

Amber Jones

Amber Jones is originally from Chicago, IL, and has lived in the Twin Cities for the past nine years. She is currently the Outreach Coordinator for the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage, an agency of the State of Minnesota. She possesses over ten years of community engagement, advocacy, and leadership experience. She has worked in various public and non-profit industries, including education, community & economic development, museums, & state government. Amber has done everything from leading community engagement initiatives in large institutions to build better relationships with African American communities, to organizing several policy and advocacy campaigns for systemic change at multiple levels of government. She is committed to increasing access & participation in social, economic, and political processes among communities of color; to cultivating the next generation of leaders; and to encouraging unity and self-determination among people of African descent. Amber graduated summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota -Twin Cities with a B.A. in African American & African Studies and a minor in Political Science.

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