National Humanities Center names PVAMU’s Will Guzmán as one of its 2021-22 Fellows

PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas – Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) history professor Will Guzmán has been selected from hundreds of applicants worldwide to be a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (NHC). The prestigious award is the first for a professor from PVAMU. Guzmán will join 35 other Fellows from 16 states, as well as Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Nigeria, and Taiwan, in residence at the NHC in North Carolina for the 2021-22 academic year. Guzmán will use the time to prepare his manuscript on Raymond A. Brown: Black Power’s Attorney.

“Along with my advanced book contract from Fordham University Press, the NHC Fellowship will further allow me time and space to write and research while having access to a large pool of very talented writers and authors who can give constructive criticisms and enhance the overall quality of the work,” said Guzmán.

An independent institute for advanced study in the humanities, the NHC was created in 1978. Annually, it hosts up to 40 scholars who, during their semester- or year-long stay, enjoy library privileges at Duke, North Carolina Central, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State universities — all located within 13 miles from the NHC’s Archie K. Davis Center in Research Triangle Park. The NHC’s support has led to the publication of nearly 1,700 books.

“Chosen from 638 applicants, [this year’s Fellows] represent humanistic scholarship in African American studies; Africana studies; classics; dance studies; diaspora studies; European studies; geography; history; history of art and architecture; history of science; indigenous studies; languages and literature; Latin American studies; medical humanities; medieval studies; Middle East studies; musicology; philosophy; and religious studies. Each Fellow will work on an individual research project and will have the opportunity to share ideas in seminars, lectures, and conferences at the Center,” the NHC said in a statement.

“I think the beauty of this fellowship is that you’re in community with other scholars,” said Guzmán. “The thought is that the formal meetings will lead to informal meetings, and thus the communication and sharing of ideas.” He added that the NHC shares portions of fellows’ research and writings with its network of past participants, who can offer immediate feedback to make fellows’ arguments “more crisp” or give them further ideas to explore and research.

Guzmán is one of five scholars this year to be awarded NHC fellowships under a three-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, specifically targeting Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Fellows are awarded a stipend to cover their teaching salary, and their home institutions are awarded a certain amount to help defray the cost of hiring faculty replacements.

A specialist in African-American history after 1865 and Afro-Puerto Rican history after 1873, Guzmán is currently coediting Florida’s Black Power Movement with Florida A&M professor Kwasi Densu, as well as Maceo C. Dailey’s Emmett J. Scott: Power Broker of the Tuskegee Machine with Florida A&M associate provost David H. Jackson, Jr. Guzmán’s first book, Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands: Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon and Black Activism, won the C. Calvin Smith Book Award from the Southern Conference on African American Studies.

“Writing books is a solitary endeavor, and since we are social beings, we have been trained to dislike being alone. Thus, it requires a lot of discipline to research, write, and think critically,” said Guzmán.

Raymond A. Brown, the subject of Guzmán’s new book, was a U.S. criminal defense and civil rights lawyer. Some of his high-profile clients included New Jersey state senator Angelo Errichetti (who was convicted in the celebrated ABSCAM sting) and boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (who was wrongfully convicted of murder and later released after serving almost 20 years in prison).

Brown made his most lasting mark defending activists arrested during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, including the students detained during the 1968 Columbia University protests. He also won an acquittal on a concealed weapon charge for Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) after the 1967 Newark rebellion. Brown represented members of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. He saw firsthand the unequal treatment of Black soldiers during his U.S. Army tour, served as president of Jersey City’s NAACP, and remained committed to representing “casualties of prejudice and poverty,” according to his 2009 New York Times obituary.

“I think he’s fascinating,” said Guzmán, who credits the obituary with kindling his ten years (and counting) of research on Brown’s life. “Anyone who lives to 94, it’s more to document as a historian, but, nevertheless, he did a lot while he was here.”

Of the fellowship, Guzmán said, “I’m proud that the award brings awareness from this national organization to the quality of scholars that we have here at PVAMU. It will allow the university’s name to be promoted among that community of intellectuals. It shows that we’re serious and committed to scholarship.”

Guzmán is grateful to the scholarly support, example, and promotion of African American studies by PVAMU President Ruth Simmons, Provost James Palmer, and History Program Coordinator Ronald Goodwin. “Particularly Dean Dorie Gilbert and Associate Dean William Hoston, who initially made me aware of the NHC and pushed me to apply: Thank you!”

Click here to view the National Humanities Center’s complete list of 2021–22 Fellows.

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