Professor Amaka Okuchukwu- Helena Hicks April 2026
April 15, 2026 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Please join us for an exciting lecture given by Professor Amaka Okuchukwu for our sixth and final Helena Hicks Speaker of the season.
Please note that Black Culture Builders of Baltimore Coworking begins at 4pm in the same space!
This event is FREE and open to the public. Please register below!
Amaka Okechukwu is an Associate Research Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar engaged in research on social movements, Black communities, urban sociology, race, and public history. She is the author of To FulFill These Rights: Political Struggle over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions (Columbia University Press 2019). The book is the winner of the Eduardo Bonilla-Silva book award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Ida B. Wells-Barnett book award from the Association of Black Sociologists, and was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2021. She is also the recipient of the Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Institute of Citizens and Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation), the Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was an African American Digital Humanities Scholar at the University of Maryland, College-Park.
She is currently completing her next book manuscript, tentatively titled Black Belt Brooklyn: Community Building and Black Social Life in the Late 20th Century, which is about community organizing in Black Brooklyn communities during the urban crisis. Her scholarly articles have appeared in journals such as City & Community, Du Bois Review, Society and Space, The Black Scholar, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Social Forces, and more. She has also worked in public history roles for Weeksville Heritage Center and Brooklyn Historical Society (now the Center for Brooklyn History).
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Come and engage with us as we delve into conversations about health-related racial inequalities and pay tribute to Ms. Helena Hicks, a pioneering figure in the student-led Civil Rights Movement in Baltimore City.