Akinyele Umoja

Who is Akinyele Umoja?

Akinyele Umoja is an educator and scholar-activist. Dr. Umoja has varied experiences as an educator. He has taught in secondary schools, alternative schools, and colleges and universities, as well as developed Afrikan-centered curriculum for public schools and community education programs.

Currently, he is an Associate Professor and department chair in the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University. At GSU, Umoja is responsible for teaching courses related to the history of people of African descent in Georgia, the Civil Rights Movement and other Black political and social movements, courses on the enslavement of African people in the New World, African religion and philosophy, and 19th and 20th century Black political and social movements.

Dr. Umoja’s writing has been featured in scholarly publications as The Journal of Black Studies, New Political Science, The International Journal of Africana Studies, Black Scholar, Radical History Review and Socialism and Democracy. Umoja was one of the contributors to Blackwell Companion on African-American History, edited by Alton Hornsby; The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, edited by Charles Earl Jones;Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party, edited by Kathleen Cleaver and George Katisaficus; and "Malcolm X: A Historical Reader", edited by James Conyers and Andrew Smallwood. In April 2013, New York University Press published Umoja's first single authored book titled WE WILL SHOOT BACK: ARMED RESISTANCE IN THE MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM MOVEMENT.