History Department

Education

• PhD, History, University of Chicago, 2013
• MA, Social Sciences, University of Chicago, 2004
• BA, History, Cornell University, 2003

About

Traci Parker is a specialist in African American history. Her work focuses on the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, labor, consumer capitalism, gender, and sexuality. Her first book, Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), was named a 2019 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. She is the co-editor of The New Civil Rights Movement Reader: Resistance, Resilience, and Justice (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023). Her current book project, Beyond Loving: Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Black Freedom Movement, explores activists’ romantic relationships in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. Prior to coming to UC Davis, she worked in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Research Focus

African American History; Twentieth-Century U.S. History; Civil Rights and Black Power Movements; Labor; Capitalism; Race and racism; Gender and sexuality

Select Publications

The New Civil Rights Movement Reader: Resistance, Resilience, and Justice (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023).

“Foreword” in Black Female Perspectives from Predominantly White Institutions: Strategies for Wellbeing in White Spaces and Beyond (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023).

“‘Sears discriminated against me because of sex and race:’ African American Women Workers, Title VII, and the Sears Sex Discrimination Case,” Journal of Women’s History, spring 2021.

Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s (University of North Carolina Press, 2019).

"Black Christmas and American Department Stores," The American Historian, November 2018.

“Southern Retail Campaigns and the Struggle for Black Economic Freedom” in Race and Retail: Consumption Across the Color Line, eds. Mia Bay and Ann Fabian (Rutgers University Press, 2015): 77-98.

Teaching

History of the Civil Rights Movement; Black Women’s History; Race and American Consumer Culture; African American labor and class formation; and Black love, sex, and marriage

Select Awards

• Charles Warren Center for the Studies in American History Faculty Fellowship, Harvard University, 2023
• Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2022
• National Endowment for the Humanities Individual Fellowship, 2021
• Stanford Humanities Center External Faculty Fellowship, 2021
• University of Massachusetts Faculty Research Grant/Healey Grant, 2021
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Short Term Award Fellowship, 2020
• CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award for Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement, 2019
• Hutchins Center for African & African American Research Fellowship, W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, Harvard University, 2019
• National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 2018
• Nancy Weiss Malkiel Junior Faculty Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson Foundation/The Institute for Citizens & Scholars, 2018
• New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, 2018
• Albert M. Greenfield Fellowship, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 2018
• Lilly Fellowship Program for Teaching Excellence, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2017