Biographical Sketch of Dr. Lillie Johnson Edwards

Dr. Lillie Johnson Edwards is Professor of History, Director of American Studies and Founding Director of Pan-African Studies at Drew University in Madison, NJ.  She has taught African-American History, U.S. History, American Studies, African literature, and African history at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and DePaul University in Chicago.

Dr. Edwards is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Oberlin College where she received her B.A. in English and with honors in history.  In 1981 she received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in African History, U.S. Southern history and African literature.

Dr. Edwards has served as the National Director of the Association of Black Women Historians; on the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History; and as chair of the nominations committee of the American Historical Association.  She has delivered scholarly papers at national and local conferences including the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, the American Academy of Religion, the American Studies Association, the African Studies Association. She is a contributing author to A Historical Dictionary of Civil Rights in the United States, The Dictionary of Christianity in America, Black Women in the United States:  An Historical Encyclopedia and to The Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History.  Her book for adolescents, A Biography of Denmark Vesey: Slave Revolt Leader, was cited as one of the New York Public Library's "Books for the Teen Age,” 1991.  She is also the co-author of a 2007 anthology of readings for high school students and teachers to use as they read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

A current member of the New Jersey Amistad Commission and co-chair of its curriculum committee, Dr. Edwards has extensive experience as a consultant in multicultural education including workshops for secondary school teachers on African oral literature, Africana Studies curriculum development, African-American history and women’s studies.  She has also served as a consultant, review panelist, and seminar leader for programs sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.