Skip to main content

Homepage

Photograph of Professor Kendra Boyd

Bio

Dr. Kendra Boyd is a scholar of African American history. Her research focuses on black business and economic history, urban history, and migration. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Rutgers University–New Brunswick and was previously an assistant professor at York University in Toronto before joining the history department at Rutgers-Camden in the fall of 2020. Currently, she is writing a book on black entrepreneurship and racial capitalism in Great Migration–era Detroit, Michigan.

At Rutgers-Camden, Dr. Boyd is an affiliated faculty member in the Africana Studies Program and an affiliated scholar at the Center for Urban Research and Education (CURE). She is also an affiliated scholar at the Scarlet and Black Research Center at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice in New Brunswick.

Dr. Boyd is currently recruiting participants for the Black Camden Oral History Project in collaboration with the Scarlet and Black Research Center. She began developing this project as a Public Humanities Fellow at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) in 2022.

During 2021–2022 Dr. Boyd was part of the inaugural cohort of Early Career Faculty Fellows at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice (ISGRJ).

News about Dr. Boyd:

Feature about the Black Camden Oral History Project: The Oral History of Camden, Rutgers Magazine, Summer 2022.

Article about the Black Camden Oral History Project: Preserving Perspectives, Rutgers Alumni News, January 10, 2022.

Rutgers–Camden Professor Earns Prestigious 2021 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Article Prize from Association of Black Women Historians, Rutgers–Camden News Now, November 15, 2021.

Researchers Join Together to Study Systemic Racism Through Rutgers Institute, Rutgers Today, September 20, 2021.

Education

Ph.D. History, Rutgers University–New Brunswick, 2017

B.S. Business Administration, cum laude, with university honors, Wayne State University, 2010

Select Publications

“A ‘Body of Business Makers’: The Detroit Housewives League, Black Women Entrepreneurs, and the Rise of Detroit’s African American Business Community,” Enterprise & Society (September 2020). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2020.39. Winner of the 2021 Letitia Woods Brown Article Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians.

Scarlet and Black, Volume 2: Constructing Race and Gender at Rutgers, 1865–1945, co-edited with Marisa Fuentes and Deborah Gray White (Rutgers University Press, 2020). Winner of the 2022 Edited Non-fiction Author Award from the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance.

“National Black Economic Development Conference (Black Manifesto)” in Black Power Encyclopedia: From “Black is Beautiful” to Urban Uprisings, edited by Akinyele Umoja, Karin L. Stanford, and Jasmin A. Young (ABC-CLIO, 2018).

“Old Money: Rutgers University and the Political Economy of Slavery in New Jersey,” co-authored with Miya Carey and Christopher Blakley, in Scarlet and Black, Volume 1: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History, ed. Marisa Fuentes and Deborah Gray White (Rutgers University Press, 2016).

“His Name Was Will: Remembering Enslaved Individuals in Rutgers History,” co-authored with Jesse Bayker and Christopher Blakley, in Scarlet and Black, Volume 1: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History, ed. Marisa Fuentes and Deborah Gray White (Rutgers University Press, 2016).

Digital and Public History Projects

Black Camden Oral History Project. Currently recruiting participants, learn more at https://blackcamden.org/

Detroit Black Business: Mapping Economic Growth and Destruction, ArcGIS project under development

“Black Health in Early 19th-Century New Brunswick,” online exhibit, Scarlet and Black Digital Archive, https://scarletandblack.rutgers.edu/archive/exhibits/show/black-health

Courses

Undergraduate courses in History, cross-listed with Africana Studies:

  • African American History I
  • African American History II
  • The Civil Rights Movement (elective course for the Legal Studies minor)
  • The African American Great Migration

Graduate courses in History:

  • Readings in African American History, to 1877
  • Readings in African American History, 1877 to present
  • Research Seminar in African American History