Melissa N. Stuckey

Dr. Melissa N. Stuckey is assistant professor of African American history at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina. She is a specialist in early twentieth century black activism and a scholar committed to engaging the public in important conversations about African American history.

She is the author of several magazine and journal articles including “Boley, Indian Territory: Exercising Freedom in the All Black Town,” published in 2017 in the Journal of African American History and "“Freedom on Her Own Terms: California M. Taylor and Black Womanhood in Boley, Oklahoma” in This Land is Herland: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma, 1870s-2010s, (University of Oklahoma Press, forthcoming).

Melissa Stuckey is currently completing her first book, entitled “All Men Up”: Seeking Freedom in the All-Black Town of Boley, Oklahoma, which interrogates the black freedom struggle in Oklahoma as it took shape in the state’s largest all-black town.

Melissa has been awarded several prestigious grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and the National Parks Service (NPS) for her work seeking ways to preserve Northeastern North Carolina’s Rosenwald school history.

She is also a contributing historian on the NEH-funded “Free and Equal Project” in Beaufort, South Carolina which interprets the story of Reconstruction for a national and an international audience. and senior historical consultant to the Coltrane Group, a non-profit organization in Oklahoma committed to helping these towns survive in the 21st century.

She earned her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and her Ph.D. from Yale University.