Crystal Sanders
Crystal R. Sanders is an Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Sanders is a historian of the 20th Century United States, with specializations in civil rights history, the history of Black education, and Black women’s history. She received her bachelor’s degree in history and public policy from Duke University and her Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University. Her award-winning book, A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi’s Black Freedom Struggle (UNC Press 2016), explored how working-class black women in Mississippi transformed the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM), a federal Head Start program, into an opportunity to secure political and economic self-determination. Sanders’s study of the Head Start program complicates the pervasive view that the War on Poverty was a failure. Her articles have appeared in numerous journals including the Journal of Southern History, the North Carolina Historical Review, the Journal of African American History, and the History of Education Quarterly. She is the recipient of several honors including a Ford Foundation Doctoral Fellowship, Spencer Foundation Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships, the Southern Historical Association’s C. Vann Woodward Prize, and the Organization of American Historian’s Huggins-Quarles Award. Dr. Sanders served as a consultant for and is featured in filmmaker Stanley Nelson’s PBS documentary titled “Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities.”
By Crystal Sanders:
