Charles W. McKinney, Jr. is Professor of History at Rhodes College in Memphis. He earned his bachelor’s degree in history from Morehouse College, and his Ph.D. in African American History from Duke University. He is a scholar of the African American experience and teaches a wide range of courses on Black life, race, politics, activism and the African American intellectual tradition. His specific area of research is movement building in the Civil Rights/Black Power Era.

McKinney is the author of Greater Freedom: The Evolution of the Civil Rights Struggle in Wilson, North Carolina. His second book, co-edited with Aram Goudsouzian, is An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee. His third book, co-edited with Françoise Hamlin, is titled From Rights To Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle. McKinney has also written essays on Martin Luther King, Jr., Black women’s civil rights narratives, Freedom Summer, and Reconstruction. His writing and commentary have appeared in newspapers and information venues across the country, including the Memphis Commercial Appeal, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Black Perspectives, The History Channel, Vanity Fair, and MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. He has provided commentary on radio programs across the country and news outlets in the United Kingdom, Europe, China and Australia, and has appeared on CNN.

McKinney serves as an Academic Advisor on the National Civil Rights Museum Redesign Team. He regularly conducts professional development workshops on teaching the civil rights movement for public school teachers across the nation. He is a former board member of the Institute for Southern Studies and currently serves on the Advisory Committee for Labor South: The Center for Working Class Studies. McKinney has conducted trainings and workshops on movement building and grass-roots activism for union members and organizers in California, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana.