Dexter Blackman

Dexter Blackman is an Associate Professor of History and Director of the Africana Studies program at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. His current book and documentary project focuses on the Olympic Project for Human Rights, a Black Power campaign to boycott the 1968 Olympics that produced the Black Fists protest at the 1968 Olympics. The book improves our understanding of Black Freedom Struggles in the 1960s by exploring how an increase in institutionalized racism radicalized Black communities and activists, which influenced the period’s Black Power and Black Students movements and produced challenges to traditional Black advancement philosophies like The Myth of the Black Athlete.  

His peer-reviewed work has been published in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, American Journalism, and Sport History Review and edited volumes. Dexter has held research fellowships at the W.E.B. Institute for African and African American Research Center at Harvard University, the Ralph Bunche Center at the University of California-Los Angeles, and the Black Metropolitan Research Center at the University of Chicago. Future research ventures include a manuscript on Malcolm X, Pan Africanism, and the Cold War and the impact of mass incarceration on the Black family. 

Dexter is also a member of the National Council of Black Studies, where he serves as member of the executive board, treasurer, and acting editor of The Journal of Africana Studies. 

Dexter earned a B.A. at North Carolina Central University and a doctorate at Georgia State University.