Brenda Gayle Plummer

Education
Ph.D., Cornell University
M.A., Teachers College, Columbia University, 1973
B.A., Antioch College, 1969

Short Biography
Brenda Gayle Plummer is a historian whose research includes race and gender, international relations, and civil rights. Her work ranges from essays on Haitian-American relations to studies of Afro-Americans, race, and foreign affairs. Plummer has taught Afro-American history throughout her twenty years experience in higher education. Plummer has taught at historically black Fisk University, the University of California Santa Barbara, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin.

Plummer’s publications include articles and reviews that have appeared in such journals as Phylon, International History Review, TransAfrica Forum, Latin American Research Review, and Diplomatic History, American Historical Review, and the Journal of American History. She has contributed to a number of collections and reference works. Plummer is also the author of three books of original scholarship and the recipient of book prizes in Afro-American history and diplomatic history respectively from the American Historical Association, and the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations.

Interests
Civil rights and modern Afro-American history
Race and international affairs
African diaspora history

Books
Haiti and the Great Powers, 1902-1915, 1988
Haiti: The Psychological Moment [Haiti and the United States], 1992
Rising Wind: Black Americans and U. S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960, 1996
Ed., Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs,1945-1988, 2003
In Search of Power: African Americans in the Era of Decolonization, 1956 – 1974, 2013

Publications
“Firmin and Marté at the Intersection of Pan-Americanism and Pan-Africanism,” in Jeffrey Belnap and Raul Fernandez, eds., José Marté’s “Our America”: From National to Hemispheric Cultural Studies (Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 210-227.
“Castro in Harlem: A Cold War Watershed,” in Allen Hunter, ed., Rethinking the Cold War: Essays on Its Dynamics, Meaning, and Morality (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997).
“‘Below the Level of Men’: African-Americans, Race, and the History of U. S. Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History 20 (Fall 1996): 639-650.
“The Afro-American Response to the Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934,” Phylon 43 (June l982):125-143. Forthcoming Work: America’s Dilemma: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs (University of North Carolina Press).
“Restaurant Citizens to the Barricades!” American Quarterly (2008): 23- 31.
“Peace Was the Glue: Europe and African American Freedom,”Souls 10 (2:2008), 103-122.
“The Changing Face of Diplomatic History: A Literature Review,” History Teacher 38 (May 2005): 385-400.

Courses Taught
Afro-American History Since 1900
History of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States
America’s Impact Abroad
African and Afro-American Historical Linkages