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Photograph of Professor Kendra Boyd

Dr. Kendra Boyd is a scholar of African American history whose research focuses on Black business and economic history, urban history, and migration. She holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Wayne State University and a Ph.D. in History from Rutgers University–New Brunswick.

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

From 2025-2028 Boyd will direct the South Jersey Hub’s research for the Truth and Repair project.

She is currently working on a book project that examines Black women-led cooperative grocery stores during the 1960s and 1970s.

Select Publications

Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025).

“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). https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2020.39.

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).

Digital Map & Database

Explore the interactive digital map and database of Detroit’s historic Black-owned businesses at freedomenterprise.org

Select Awards & Grants

Awards

  • Ida B. Wells & Cheikh Anta Diop Award, National, National Council for Black Studies (NCBS), 2026
  • State History Award, Historical Society of Michigan, 2025 (For Freedom Enterprise book)
  • Cheryl Wall Faculty Fellowship, Rutgers University, 2024-2025
  • Letitia Woods Brown Article Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians, 2021 (For “A ‘Body of Business Makers’” article)
  • Author Award (Edited Non-fiction), New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance, 2022 (For Scarlet and Black Vol. 2 book)

Grants

  • Urban Innovation Fund grant, DICE, Rutgers University–Camden, to create a traveling exhibit on African American history in Camden, New Jersey, 2026-2027
  • Truth and Repair South Jersey Hub subaward from Princeton University, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2025-2028.
  • Rutgers Research Council Award for mapping historic Black businesses in Detroit, Michigan, 2023-2025 Detroit Black Business Map
  • Clark–McClintock–Gershenson Subvention Award, Department of History, Rutgers University– New Brunswick, 2024
  • Albert J. Beveridge Grant, American Historical Association, 2015