MacArthur fellow P. Gabrielle Foreman wants to make sure ‘unremembered’ Black history gets taught

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October 14, 2022

By Zachary Schermele, NBC News

P. Gabrielle Foreman is a literary historian and digital humanist at Pennsylvania State University. (MacArthur Foundation)

A professor at Penn State University who documented the “unremembered history” of Black political organizing is one of this year’s 25 MacArthur fellows, a select group of scholars who receive $800,000 no-strings-attached “genius grants” to further their work.

The MacArthur Foundation announced Wednesday that P. Gabrielle Foreman, co-director of Penn’s Center for Black Digital Research, was awarded the fellowship for her work “uncovering histories of African American organizing that are still relevant and resonant today.”

“I just could not be more honored,” Foreman told NBC News.

Foreman is the founding director of the Colored Conventions Project, a research initiative dedicated to archiving the history of Black men and women’s efforts to attain civil rights, dating back to the 1830s.

That history, Foreman argues, has been largely erased from academic discussions and mainstream conversations.

“We knew about the anti-slavery movement; we knew about abolition,” she said. “But the very same African Americans that were involved with those were advocating for the very same things that are on the table today.”

Learn more about Foreman.

Unknown history is one reason why ABHM was established. Our physical museum and online exhibits aim to fix that.

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