Rhonda Y. Williams

Rhonda Y. Williams is Professor and Coleman A. Young Foundation Endowed Chair in the African American Studies Department at Wayne State University. She is a leading scholar in Black urban history and African American studies, with a focus on struggles against urban inequality and the search for Black Power in the 20th century.

Her research interests center on:

• Black urban history across three centuries
• Race and place dynamics in American cities
• Self-determination strategies in urban Black communities
• Historical processes shaping postindustrial cities

Williams is author of The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles against Urban Inequality and Concrete Demands: The Search for Black Power in the 20th Century. She co-edited the volume Black Urban History at the Crossroads and serves as coeditor of the Justice, Power, and Politics book series at the University of North Carolina Press.