Rhonda Williams

professor, Case Western Reserve University

Social Justice Institute director Rhonda Y. Williams, PhD, is an associate professor of history and the founder and director of the postdoctoral fellowship in African American studies at Case Western Reserve. The award-winning author of The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women's Struggles against Urban Inequality, Williams has been honored by History News Network as a Top Young Historian and is listed in the 2009 edition of Who's Who in Black Cleveland. Her research interests include the manifestations of race and gender inequality on urban space and policy, the history of low-income people's lives and activism, and illicit narcotics economies in the post-1940s United States. Williams is a recipient of an American Association of University Women Postdoctoral Fellowship and a former Harvard University W.E.B. Du Bois Institute Fellow. She is the co-editor of the recently launched book series, Justice, Power, and Politics, with the University of North Carolina Press. Williams received her PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1998 and her undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Maryland College Park in 1989, where she became that university's first black salutatorian in its then 187-year history. Her publications include articles on black power politics, the war on poverty, low-income black women's grassroots organizing, and urban and housing policy. To learn more about social justice initiatives at Case Western Reserve and how you can be involved, contact the Social Justice Institute at 216.368.2515 or socialjustice@case.edu.