Wanda A. Hendricks teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on African Americans, African American women and the United States from 1865 to the present.

Her primary focus is on the social and political experiences of African Americans during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She is the author of Gender, Race, and Politics in the Midwest: Black Club Women In Illinois, published by Indiana University Press in 1998 and is a senior editor of the three volume Black Women In America published by Oxford University Press in 2005.

Current Activities

Her current research is a biography of Fannie Barrier Williams, a 19th and early 20th century black female reformer and intellectual. Born in Brockport, New York, Williams came of age during one of the most volatile periods in American History. A clubwoman, activist and prolific writer, she played a significant role in shaping the social welfare agenda for African Americans and she challenged racism and discrimination that plagued black life.

In the spring she received the Outstanding Achievement in Historic Preservation Award form The Lucy Craft Laney Museum in Augusta, Georgia, for her work in African American History.

She is currently a member of the 2008 Program Committee for the Organization of American Historians(OAH) and the 2007 Program Committee for the Southern Historical Association(SHA). She is also the chair of the endowment fund-raising committee for the Darlene Clark Hine Award in Black Women and Gender History for the OAH.

Contributions can be made online at:

https://www.oah.org/giving/hineprize.html

Professor Hendricks will be on sabbatical during the 2007-2008 academic year.