Kathy Roberts Forde

Professor of Journalism University of Massachusetts Amherst

  • Amherst MA

Kathy Roberts Forde studies the Black freedom struggle and the press, First Amendment, literary journalism and history of book culture.

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University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Expertise

African American Freedom Struggle and the Press
The First Amendment
Journalism History
Journalism
Literary Journalism
Media and Civil Rights History

Biography

A prolific and award-winning author, Kathy Roberts Forde is a journalism historian who studies and writes about in the First Amendment, democracy and public sphere, the African American freedom struggle, literary journalism, and the history of the book and print culture.

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Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Ph.D.

Mass Communication/Media Studies

Middlebury College

M.A.

English Language and Literature/Letters

Sewanee University: The University of the South

B.A.

Select Recent Media Coverage

Journalism and Jim Crow

New Books Network  online

2022-02-24

Kathy Roberts Forde explores the leading role of the white press in constructing an anti-democratic society by promoting and supporting not only lynching and convict labor but also coordinated campaigns of violence and fraud that disenfranchised Black voters.

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Opinion: Georgia regents honor racists rather than rout racism

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution  print

2021-12-06

Kathy Roberts Forde comments about the Georgia University System’s decision to reject a recommendation to rename buildings named after Confederate leaders and supporters of segregation. “It is not good for students, faculty and staff to live their lives in buildings named for people responsible for violent white supremacy,” she says.

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Georgia’s University System Will Not Rename Buildings With Ties to Slavery

The New York Times  print

2021-11-23

Kathy Roberts Forde comments about the Georgia University System’s decision to reject a recommendation to rename buildings named after Confederate leaders and supporters of segregation.

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Select Publications

The history of Memphis set the stage for the killing of Tyre Nichols

The Washington Post

Isaiah Stafford and Kathy Roberts Forde

2023-07-10

Kathy Roberts Forde and recent journalism graduate Isaiah Stafford write that a history of police violence spanning more than 150 years set the stage for the death of Tyre Nichols following his arrest in the city in January.

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Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America (BOOK)

University of Illinois Press

Kathy Roberts Forde, editor

2021-12-14

The contributors explore the leading role of the white press in constructing an anti-democratic society by promoting and supporting not only lynching and convict labor but also coordinated campaigns of violence and fraud that disenfranchised Black voters.

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How the Tougaloo Nine transformed history

The Washington Post

Sophia Gardner, Brie Thompson-Bristol and Kathy Roberts Forde

2021-05-23

Roberts Forde et al write that the arrest of the nine students set in motion a remarkable series of events from 1961 to 1964 that pitted the full force of the white supremacist power structure in Mississippi against a small, private Black Christian college.

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