Deborah Gray White

Deborah Gray White is the Board of Governors Professor of History and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. She has held significant leadership roles at Rutgers, having chaired the History Department from 2000 to 2003 and directed "The Black Atlantic: Race, Nation and Gender" project at The Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis from 1997 to 1999. Currently, she leads the Scarlet and Black Project, which investigates Native Americans and African Americans in Rutgers University's history.

Dr. White received her Bachelors in History from Tougaloo College and maintains academic affiliations with Binghamton University (her undergraduate alma mater, which awarded her an Honorary Doctorate), Columbia University, and the University of Illinois Chicago.

Dr. White is a pioneering scholar in African American women's history whose work focuses on the intersection of race, gender, and slavery in American history. Her research has fundamentally reshaped understanding of enslaved women's experiences in the antebellum South and documented how Black women have navigated and resisted oppression throughout American history. She has also made significant contributions to examining the development of Black women's historical scholarship itself, particularly through her influential edited volume "Telling Histories: Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower" which documents the experiences of Black women historians.

Dr. White's scholarly contributions have been recognized with prestigious awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Woodrow Wilson International Center Fellowship, and the Carter G. Woodson Medallion for excellence in African American history. Her work has had significant impact in the field, with her 1988 book "Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South" receiving over 700 citations.

As a mentor and leader, Dr. White has shaped generations of historians through her teaching and scholarship. Her current Scarlet and Black Project represents an important institutional history initiative examining Rutgers University's connections to slavery and dispossession, continuing her commitment to uncovering and documenting the experiences of marginalized groups in American history.