Dr. Thomas Bynum

Assistant Professor

CONTACT:
E-mail: thomas.bynum@mtsu.edu
Phone: 615-898-2760
Office Location and Mailing Address: Peck Hall, Room 224E.
MTSU Box 23
Murfreesboro, TN 37132

FIELDS: African American History and American South

BIOGRAPHY: I have a keen interest in 20th century social movements, particularly young people's role in antiwar protests, Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and the Women's Liberation Movement (or Second Wave feminist movement). My first book examines the NAACP youth councils and college chapters' activism from 1936-1965 to achieve equality for black Americans. Currently, I am researching the influences the Young Turks (who were militant, young black professionals) and Black Power on the NAACP and its youth organizations during the 1960s.

UNDEGRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT:

• History 2040, Survey of African American History I (before 1865)
• History 2050, Survey of African American History II (since 1865)
• History 3020, Topics in American History, Youth Activism since the 1930s
• History 3020, Topics in American History: Modern Civil Rights Movement
• History 3030, Topics in African American History: Black Youth Activism and the Civil Rights Movement
• African American Studies (AAS) 2050, Introduction to African American Studies.

GRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT:

• History 6104/7104, Readings seminar in Civil Rights and  Black Power movements
• History 6105/7105, Research seminar in Civil Rights and Black Power movements

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS: 

 Bynum, Thomas L. NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom. Knoxville: University of Tennessee, (forthcoming 2013).

Bynum, Thomas L. "'We Must March Forward': Juanita Jackson and the Origins of the NAACP Youth Movement," Journal of African American History, Vol. 94, No. 4, Special Issue: "Documenting the NAACP's First Century" (Fall 2009), pp. 487-508.

Bynum, Tommy L. and Tara White. "The Civil Rights Movement in Tennessee," in Tennessee Electronic History Reader, ed. Amy Sayward. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007.

SELECTED AWARDS: 

Southern Regional Education Board Scholars Program Dissertation Award (2007)

Southern Regional Education Board Doctoral Scholar (2006)

W. E. B. Du Bois Fellow, Harvard University, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute (2006).

WORKS IN PROGRESS:

"Old Guard verses New Guard: Young Turks, Black Power and the NAACP," to be submitted to the Journal of American History.

Review of Victoria W. Wolcott's Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America. To be published in the Journal of Southern History (spring 2013).

EDUCATION:

Ph.D., Georgia State University, 2007.
M.A.,    Clark Atlanta University, 1995.
B. S.,   Barton College, 1993.

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