Florida A&M University announced that History Professor Darius Young, Ph.D., has been awarded a 2024 ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).
The ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowship and Grant Program provides flexible support that attends to the research, teaching, and service commitments at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Young is one of 20 HBCU faculty scholars who will receive support as they pursue exceptional research projects in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.
“I am humbled to be included in this inaugural class of ACLS HBCU Fellows and grantees. I am honored that the ACLS found value in my work and is willing to invest in my next book project, which focuses on the Civil Rights movement in my hometown, Detroit,” Young said. “The ACLS has a long history of supporting humanistic scholarship, and this fellowship will allow us to dedicate time to our research, connect with other scholars, travel to archives, and amplify the intellectual contributions HBCU faculty make to the academy and society.
Selected from a pool of more than 150 applications, Young has been recognized as one of eight fellows who will receive up to $50,000 each supporting long-term engagement with a significant research project.
All awardees will also have access to networking and scholarly programming that aligns with their academic goals and institutional contexts. Each award includes an additional grant of $2,500 to the awardee’s home institution to support humanities programming or infrastructure.
Young is a historian of 20th-century U.S. history. His research focuses on the interrelationship between race and politics during the long Civil Rights movement. His first book, Robert R. Church Jr. and the African American Political Struggle, was published by the University Press of Florida in 2019 and won the C. Calvin Smith Book Award from the Southern Conference on African American Studies, Inc.
He serves on the editorial board for the University Press of Florida and the Journal of African American History. In 2022 and 2023, he co-chaired the Academic Planning Committee for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Conference, which was founded by Carter G. Woodson in 1915 and is still the preeminent conference for Black history.
His current book project, Freedom Now!: Detroit and the Revolutionary Year of 1963, explores the social and political movements that led to the emergence of Black Power politics in the city. He focuses on how Black Detroiters confronted the city’s racialized political structure by combating issues such as housing and school segregation, job discrimination, police brutality, and an unjust justice system.
“We are thrilled to award these outstanding scholars the inaugural ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowships and Grants,” said ACLS President Joy Connolly. “Historically Black Colleges and Universities are a vital part of American higher education, with a long history of rich contributions to public knowledge and our nation’s social and political health. ACLS celebrates the commitment and brilliance of these awardees and applauds their institutions for fostering excellence in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.”
ACLS developed the HBCU Faculty Fellowship and Grant Program collaboratively with HBCU faculty and academic leaders though a series of on-campus workshops and discussions and virtual focus groups. Learn more about the ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowship and Grant Program and sign up to stay updated about the program.