The Condemnation of Blackness

Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also Harvard’s director of the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project. Previously, Muhammad was the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. Muhammad grew up in Chicago’s South Side and received his PhD specializing in 20th century American History and African American history at Rutgers University. He is the great-grandson of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam from 1934-1975.

Muhammad’s resume and extensive expertise make him a clear authority on the subject matter explored in his book. His decades of historical training lend to the strengths of the source analyses in The Condemnation of Blackness. Further, his familiarity with the discipline of history and its dominant discourses allows him to construct a revisionist thesis that critiques and revises prevalent understandings of subjects like race relations, the Progressive era, and Black anti-racist movements. His experiences situate Muhammad as a unique historian who has a proven record of applying his historical research to instituting solutions for contemporary society. These aspects of Muhammad’s background frame The Condemnation of Blackness as a work that is equally concerned with contributing to the field of history as it is contributing to America’s larger political and cultural discourses.