For Speaking Engagements, contact

Dr. CLENORA HUDSON-WEEMS
Professor of English
University of Missouri-Columbia
107 Tate Hall
Columbia, Missouri 65211

573-882-2783 (office)
573-449-5198 (residence)
917-715-2965 (cell)
email: HudsonweemsC@missouri.edu

Africana Womanism Summit and Banquet
Pittsburgh, PA, April 21-22, 2009
flyer | program (both in Word - updated 4-21)
Africana Woman and Africana Man (both in pdf)

New: Africana Womanism and Baraka Obama book and chapter info
Also available: book covers

A Case of Plagiarism (Word)
New Release: The Definitive Emmett Till and
Re-release: Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement
Emmett Till Movie Synopsis
Emmett Till Film news release
Chronology of the Definitive Emmett Till Work (in Word)
Smokin' Joe article (in Word)
Smokin' Joe (in Word)
Press Release (in Word)
Curriculum vitae (uploaded September 2009)

Biographical Sketch

Clenora Hudson-Weems, Professor of English (UMC), received the Ph. D. ( U. of Iowa), M.A. ( Atlanta U.), B. A. (LeMoyne College) degrees, and a Certificate of French Studies (L'Universite de Dijon, France). She is author of Africana Womanism & Race & Gender in the Presidential Candidacy of Barack Obama (2008 & 2009); Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves (1993); Africana Womanist Literary Theory (2004); two books in her Emmett Till Trilogy-- Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement (994 & 2006); The Definitive Emmett Till: Passion and Battle of a Woman for Truth and Intellectual Justice (2006); and editor of the third of the Till Trilogy-- Plagiarism—Physical and Intellectual Lynchings: An Emmett Till Continuum (2007). She is also co-author with Wilfred D. Samuels of Toni Morrison (1990) and editor of Contemporary Africana Theory, Thought & Action: A Guide to Africana Studies (2007).

In 1995, she was interviewed on two of her books, Emmett Till and Africana Womanism by The American Audio Prose Library. She has published in several refereed journals, including The Western Journal of Black Studies, The Journal of Black Studies, College Language Journal, and Phylon. She contributed an article to Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition (Houghton Mifflin, 1997) and has written chapters for a number of books on Africana literature, women and culture, including Environmental Justice in the New Millennium: Global Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity, and Human Rights (2009); A Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide to the African American Experience (2000), Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies (2003), State of the Race, Creating Our 21 st Century (2004) and Sisterhood, Feminisms and Power (1998). Forthcoming is her first novel, Soul Mates.  A recipient of a number of honors and awards including Ford Fellowships, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the CIC Internship, she received a 1998 Toni Morrison Society Book Award. She has completed a movie script, “Unearthing Emmett Till: Passion for Truth” (Barry Marrow, Oscar Award-Winning Co-Writer of Rain Man and Producer). Married to historian Robert Weems, Jr, they have one daughter, Cameron.
 

Books

• Africana Womanism & Race & Gender in the Presidential Candidacy of Barack Obama [cover in pdf]
  • chapter 11: World Leadership and Global Diplomacy: Barack and Michelle as Part of a Collective Mission (Word)
  • chapter 12: World Leadership and Global Diplomacy Revisted (Word)
• The Definitive Emmett Till: Passion and Battle of a Woman for Truth and Intellectual Justice, Bloomington, England: AuthorHouse, 2006. [cover in pdf]
• Africana Womanist Literary Theory, Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2004. Reviewed in The Western Journal of Black Studies, Winter 2003, pp. 275-77.
• Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves, 4th revised edition, Bedford, 2004 (1st edition--1993)--Reviews in The Western Journal of Black Studies, Winter 1994; Class Magazine, September 1994; Modern Fiction Studies, 39. 3 and 4, 1993.
• Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement, 2nd revised edition. Bedford Publishers, August 1995, (1st edition--1994) 3rd. Revised Edition, New Foreword by James Stewart, February 2000. New Release, AuthorHouse, 2006 [cover in pdf]
• Toni Morrison. NY/Boston: Prentice-Hall, 1990. (Co-authored with Wilfred D. Samuels) 2nd printing, 1993; CD-ROM, 1995--Reviews: American Studies, Fall, 1992, (135-6) MELUS US, Winter, 1991 (146-8); Choice, July 1990 (1828-9).

Edited Books

• Contemporary Africana Theory, Thought and Action: A Guide to Africana Studies, Editor, Africa World Press, 2007. [flyer in pdf]
• Plagiarism—Physical and Intellectual Lynchings: An Emmett Till Continuum (Part III of Till Trilogy), Editor, AuthorHouse, 2007 [cover in pdf]

Novel

• Soul Mates, forthcoming, 2009

Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement
and Emmett: To Live For

New Release: The Definitive Emmett Till: Passion and Battle of a Woman for Intellectual Justice and
Re-release: Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement (newly republished by AuthorHouse, Parity)
Emmett Till movie synopsis
Till Film news release
Chronology of the Definitive Emmett Till Work (in Word)
 
 Clenora Hudson-Weems, Ph.D., was the first to establish the position of the August 28, 1955, brutal lynching of Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till, the 14-year-old Black Chicago youth for whistling at a 21-year-old white woman (Carolyn Bryant) in Money, MS, as the catalyst of the Modern Civil Rights Movement. In Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement (1994), she carefully documents the Till murder case as having set the stage for the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, since it happened 3 months and 3 days before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus, December 1, 1955. A Ford Fellow, she quests for truth surrounding the underplaying of the case in American history, concluding that Park's demonstration was more palatable than Till's bloated face, in spite of King's assertion in Stride Toward Freedom that pressed in the minds of the Alabamians during the boycott was the image of Till. Contending that "Historians will talk about the good and the bad, but they won't deal with the ugly," informant for her 1988 doctoral dissertation (U. of Iowa), Rayfield Mooty, Labor Union and Civil Rights activist who advised the mother, Mamie, during the ordeal, help to make the case a "cause célèbre."

Many luminaries in the academy praised the author for her bold, brave stance regarding this case. For example, Yale University's late John Blassingame contended that the book

is an unusually revealing and exciting narration of an important twentieth century event, crucial in the origins of the Civil Rights Movement. When you really think about it, Hudson-Weems is absolutely right.

The late C. Eric Lincoln of Duke University asserted that "in Emmett Till, she drops the other shoe and challenges the most sacred shibboleths of the origins of the Civil Rights Movement." Talmadge Anderson, founding editor of The Western Journal of Black Studies (Washington State University Press), asserts that

Hudson-Weems substantiates the real catalytic event that unleashed the long inhibited Black rebellion against the viciousness and brutality of White racism. . . . The lynching of Till may no longer be denied as the genesis of the chronology of the Civil Rights Movement.

On January 1, 1998, Hudson-Weems called Barry Morrow to advise him of an epiphany she had to take the movie, "Emmett: Passion for Truth," of which she is producer with Morrow, to another level. She wanted to tell the whole story, the story of redemption, without sacrificing the legacy of Emmett Till. From the horric story of the senseless lynching of 14-year-old Emmett, we also learn of the story of the then 34-year old defense attorney, John Whitten, Jr., who delivered the defining closing remarks, "Every Last Anglo Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men" (the two murderers, 24-year old Roy Bryant and his 34-year of half brother, J. W. Milam), as the redemptive spirit. His subsequent activities as legal representative for members of the very community, Black, whom he then opposed, makes possible for a racial healing and a reconciliation for all to see without, of course, sacrificing the true legacy of Emmett Till.

Till Continuum Conferences Chaired by Hudson-Weems

•  Symposium on Civil/Human Rights of Africanans: A Till Continnuum. December 1, 2000, University of Missouri, Columbia.
• From Emmett Till, to James Byrd, Amadou Diallo & Shaka Sankofa: When Will It Stop? CEO & National Chairperson, Second National Conference on Civil/Human Rights of Africanans, Memphis, TN, September 7-10, 2000.
• From Money, MS to Union, South Carolina: The Legacy of American Oppression.  National Chairperson, First National Conference on Civil/Human Rights of African Americans, Memphis, TN, August 17-20, 1995.
• Emmett Till Day in Court 1994: A Civil Rights Forum. University of Missouri- Columbia, October 21, 1994.

Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves
Bedford Publishers
4198 Carson, Troy, MI 48098
248-641-5063
248-641-5388 (fax)

Clenora Hudson-Weems, Ph.D., in her definitive, pioneering book, Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves, explicates a paradigm for all women of African descent in terms of the relativity of her rich legacy of African womanhood and Black women activism. A family centered construct, rather than the common female centeredness associated with women movements in general, Hudson-Weems in this work articulates the true role of the Africana woman within the constructs of the modern feminist movement. In reclaiming, renaming and redefining Black women and their movement, the author, according to C. Eric Lincoln (Duke U. Professor Emeritus), has established herself "as a careful, independent thinker, unafraid to unsettle settled opinion."

Hudson-Weems has stood firm on her ground that most Black women by their historical and cultural realities are not feminists. She insists that dealing with gender issues does not automatically make one a feminist, thus the feminist has no exclusive on gender issues. Hudson-Weems has been respected by authentic Africana scholars, such as the editors of Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary (Houghton Mifflin, 1997), as "the first African American woman intellectual to formulate a position on Africana Womanism . . . [who] launched a new critical discourse in the Black Woman's Literary Movement." (1811).  In addition to many national/international speaking engagements, she has also been invited to contribute articles/book chapters on the subject in numerous other publications, including Sisterhood, Feminisms, and Power: From Africa to the Diaspora (Africa World Press, 1998, Obioma Nnaemeka, editor); Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies (Lexington Books, 2000, Delores P. Aldridge and Charlene Young, editors); Black Studies: From the Pyramids to Pan Africanism and Beyond (McGraw Hill, 2001, William "Nick" Nelson, Jr.); State of the Race: Creating Our 21^st Century (U. of Mass.-Boston, 2001, Jemadari Kamara and T. Menelik Van Der Meer, editors), etc.

Respect for Hudson-Weems' concept has extended beyond the boundaries of the United States. According to the late Zula Sofola, distinguished as Nigeria's first female playwright, in the Foreword to Hudson-Weems' book,

Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves is not simply a scholarly work, one of those in the mainstream, but our own. It is a new trail blazed with incontrovertible revelations on the African heritage and gender question. Hudson-Weems bravely takes the bull by the horns, confronts the Eurocentric avalanche of works on questions of gender, and puts forward the Afrocentric point of view. (xvii).
 

Book Chapters/Articles

In all of Hudson-Weems articles, she demonstrates a refreshing breath of Africana scholarship. Always placing Africa at the center of her analyses, she emerges as a truly authentic Africana scholar, bent on interpreting the Black experience from the perspective of authentic Black life. Her writing is thorough, engaging and lucid. Her assessment of ideas is both accurate and timely. In fact, one could even say the Hudson-Weems in many instances, is ahead of times. That was certainly the case with her work on Emmett Till, as many now do not hesitate in calling Till's brutal lynching the catalyst of the Civil Rights Movement, even though traditionally Rosa Parks' demonstration was deemed unquestionably to be the beginning of the movement by all historians, as documented in her 1988 doctoral dissertation (U. of Iowa). In addition, her seminal work on Africana Womanism was likewise ahead of its time. The challenge that Hudson-Weems took up in the mid-eighties at The National Council for Black Studies caused a momentary uproar, but very soon, after hearing her present her position that Black women were not feminists, many of her colleagues were quick to reassess their position, saying that they always knew that something was wrong with feminism for them and that it just didn't quite fit. Whenever Hudson-Weems observed that something was not quite right, she would challenge it. Her scholarship reflects this inclination, as she has remained constant in her scholarly activities and has contributed greatly to her area of expertise.

Book Chapters/Articles (2001 forward) on these two subjects, Africana Womanism and Emmett Till, include

1. "Africana Thought-Action: An Authenticating Paradigm for Africana Studies," The Western Journal of Black Studies (Fall 2006)
   
2. "Africana Womanism: The Flip Side of a Coin," in The Western Journal of Black Studies (2001).
   
   
3. "Africana Womanism: An Overview," in Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies, Delores Aldridge and Carlene Young, Editors, Lexington Books, 2000, pp. 205-217.
   
   
4. "Africana Womanism: An Historical, Global Perspective for Women of African Descent," Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition, Patricia Liggins Hill, General Editor, Houghton Mifflin, 1998, pp. 1811-1815.
   
   
5. "Africana Womanism, Black Feminism, African Feminism, Womanism," in Sisterhood, Feminisms and Power, Obioma Nneameka, Editor, New Jersey: African World Press, 1998, pp. 149-162 .
   
   
6. "Self-Naming and Self-Defining: An Agenda for Survival," in Sisterhood, Feminisms and Power, Obioma Nneameka, Editor, New Jersey: African World Press, 1998, pp. 449-452.
   
   
7. "Resurrecting Emmett Till: The Catalyst of the Civil Rights Movement," in Journal of Black Studies (Sage Publication), November 1998, pp. 179-188.
   
   
8. "Africana Womanism and the Critical Need for Africana Theory and Thought," in The Western Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2, Summer 1997, pp. 79-84.
   
   
9. "From Malcolm Little to El Hajj Malik El Shabazz: Malcolm's Evolving Attitude Toward Africana Women," The Western Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 1993, pp. 26-31.
   
   
10. "Cultural and Agenda Conflicts in Academia: Crtitical Issues for Africana Women's Studies," in The Western Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4, Winter 1989, pp. 185-189.
    
    
11. "The Tripartite Plight of African-American Women as Reflected in the Novels of Hurston and Walker," in Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, December 1989, pp. 192-207.
    
    
12. "Africana Womanism, Black Feminism, African Feminism, Womanism," in Black Studies: From the Pyramids to Pan Africanism and Beyond, William Nelson, Jr., Editor, McGraw Hill, 2001.
    
    
13. "Africana Womanism: Entering the New Millennium," in State of the Race, Creating Our 21^st Century: Where Do We Go From Here, Jemadari Kamara and T. Menelik Van Der Meer, Editors, University of MA-Boston Press, 2001.

Curriculum vitae and Articles (in Word)

Curriculum vitae
(uploaded September 2009)

Africana Womanism: An Overview, book chapter.

"Resurrecting Emmett Till: The Catalyst of the Modern Civil Rights Movement," article.

"Africana Womanism and the Critical Need for Africana Theory and Thought," article.

"Nommo: Self-Naming and Self-Definition," a revision of "Self-Naming and Self-Definition: An Agenda for Survival" in Sisterhood, Feminisms and Power (African World Press, 1998).