Publications by MLK Jr. Convocation speaker, Dr. Whitehead

February 2, 2023February 2, 2023

Dr. Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead will deliver the Convocation address for Fairfield University's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration on Feb. 9, 2023, 7:00 pm at the Quick Center for the Arts.

Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead is the founding director of The Karson Institute for Race, Peace & Social Justice and an associate professor of communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland. She is the host of the award-winning radio show Today with Dr. Kaye on WEAA, 88.9 FM, and the recent recipient of the Vernon Jarrett Medal for Journalistic Excellence for her outstanding reporting on the impact racial reckoning has had in helping to close social/racial wealth gap for Black people in America.

Dr. Whitehead's scholarship examines the ways race, class, and gender coalesce in American classrooms and political and social environments. Her work and her scholarship in activism, race, and African American history, and her work in journalism have garnered national attention and awards. She writes a bi-monthly column, “Conversations with Dr. Kaye,” for the Baltimore Afro newspaper based upon her deep ethnographic study within the Black Butterfly neighborhoods of Baltimore City.

She is the author of four books, including RaceBrave: New and Selected Works; Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis, which received both the 2015 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the Organization of American Historians and the 2014 Letitia Woods Brown Book Award from the Association of Black Women Historians; and Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America. These publications, on display for the month of January and February near the Library main level staircase, are available to borrow with your StagCard. Some are also available to access electronically via our catalog. The display also includes a selection of the past three MLK Convocation speaker's books. Click here to view the list of all publications available in our catalog by Dr. Whitehead.