Sundiata Cha-Jua

Sundiata Cha-Jua is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds a Ph.D. in History from UIUC (1993) and has taught at institutions including the University of Missouri and Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on Black racial formations, urban community studies, radical intellectual traditions, and pedagogical practices. Cha-Jua has authored seminal works like America's First Black Town, Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830-1915 and co-edited Race Struggles. He leads the Policing in a Multiracial Society Program (PSMP), providing anti-racist training for police recruits. Cha-Jua has held leadership roles in the National Council for Black Studies and serves on editorial boards of major journals like The Black Scholar and Journal of African American History. His awards include the OAH EBSCOhost Award for best U.S. history article (2009) and UIUC's Outstanding Faculty Award (2007-08).

Education: Ph.D. History (UIUC, 1993), M.A. Political Studies (UIUC Springfield), B.A. Political Science (Tougaloo College).

Research emphasizes African American community formation, lynching, historical materialism, and social movement theory. Recent work explores reparations and labor abolitionism. His Reparations and Reparatory Justice (2024) offers interdisciplinary perspectives on racial redress. Cha-Jua also contributes biweekly to the News Gazette with his column “RealTalk: A Black Perspective.”

Professional service includes roles with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Black Radical Congress. His teaching excellence is recognized through multiple UIUC student ratings and fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study and others.