Peniel E. Joseph

Joseph was born and raised in New York. His mother, a Haitian immigrant to the United States, was a major influence on his current work. Because of her, Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) and other related leaders were household names during Joseph's upbringing.

Joseph attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Africana Studies and European History. He received a Ph.D. in American History from Temple University in 2000.

Joseph at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in 2019

Joseph is the founder of the "Black Power Studies" subfield of American History and American Civil Rights History, which encompasses interdisciplinary fields such as Africana studies, law and society, women’s and ethnic studies, and political science. He has served on the faculties of the University of Rhode Island, SUNY—Stony Brook University, Brandeis University and Tufts.

He is the recipient of fellowships from Harvard University's Charles Warren Center and Hutchins Center for African and African American Research; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Ford Foundation.

In July 2020, Joseph was appointed a director of the Bayard Rustin Center for Social Justice, an LGBTQIA safe-space community activist center, located in Princeton, NJ.[1]

• Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America
• Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama
• Stokely: A Life, is a biography of Stokely Carmichael, the man who popularized the phrase "black power" and led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
• The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. is a dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
• The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era (editor)
• Neighborhood Rebels: Black Power at the Local Level (editor)
• Essays in a number of journals and newspapers, including The Journal of American History, The Chronicle Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek.
• The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2020.
• Waiting 'til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006. According to WorldCat, the book is held in 1530 libraries.[2] It was reviewed in The American Historical Review,[3] Journal of African American History [4] Contemporary Sociology.[5]
• Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama. New York, NY: BasicCivitas Books, 2010. According to WorldCat, held in 1120 libraries.[2]
• Stokely: A Life, 2014 (a biography of Stokely Carmichael).
• The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era, New York: Routledge, 2006. Reviewed in Journal of American History[6]
• Neighborhood Rebels: Black Power at the Local Level, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

As a national commentator, Joseph has spoken at the 2008 Democratic and Republic National Conventions, PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and CSPAN. He has also appeared on NBC's Morning Joe, and the Colbert Report.

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Rustin Center Board of Directors
• "Peniel Joseph: Professor, scholar, racial justice thinker" – in conversation with David Bonbright and Preeta Bansal in conversation at Awakin.org.