Meet Dr. Myrick-Harris White

About Dr. CLARISSA MYRICK-HARRIS WHITE

Dr. Clarissa Myrick-Harris White, a Professor of Africana Studies at Morehouse College, is co-founder of the college’s Black Men’s Research Institute and co-principal investigator for the Morehouse Movement, Memory, and Justice (MMJ) Project. Grants from the Mellon Foundation support both these initiatives. The MMJ Project focuses explicitly on raising Morehouse students’—and the public’s—awareness of inequities in the criminal justice system and partnering with other institutions and organizations to prepare our students to help transform that system. She is also co-principal investigator for the Chenault-Quick Family History Project. Dr. Myrick-Harris White is a member of the Board of Directors of the APEX Museum and has served as an advisor to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights Truth and Transformation initiative. She also convenes the Committee to Commemorate the Atlanta Student Movement. She is a 2022 recipient of the U.S. Presidential Lifetime Achievement and Volunteer Service Awards for more than 35 years as a higher education leader/scholar-activist and public historian.

Previously, Dr. Myrick-Harris White served as Dean of the Morehouse Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, Associate Provost for Strategic Initiatives, and Chair of the Humanities Division at the college. Before her tenure at Morehouse, she was founding director of the Curriculum and Faculty Enhancement Program of the UNCF (United Negro College Fund) Institute for Capacity Building (ICB). During her tenure as the UNCF ICB Interim Executive Director, the UNCF Black Male Initiative was established, and she led the formation of the UNCF-Human Rights Campaign Taskforce, convened to provide recommendations to HBCUs seeking to address concerns of LGBTQ students, faculty, and staff on their campuses. She has also been in leadership roles at Lincoln University of Missouri, Savannah State University, and Morris Brown College. Earlier in her career, she was on faculty at the University of Georgia and the University of Cincinnati.

Dr. Myrick-Harris White is currently co-editor-in-chief of The Black Scholar Journal. Her research focuses on the intersection of race, class, culture, and gender in the quest for social change and justice, emphasizing leadership during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Her publications include “Call the Women: The Tradition of African American Female Activism in Georgia During the Civil Rights Movement,” in the book Southern Black Women in the Modern Civil Rights Movement, and “Behind the Scenes: Two Women of the Free Southern Theater,” a chapter in Women of the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers & Torchbearers, 1941-1965. Her recent historical context study for the National Parks Service, How They Lived, focuses on the family home of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King and the childhood home of the first Black mayor of Atlanta, Maynard H. Jackson, Jr. She is currently working on the edited volume, Keep Pushing! The Atlanta Student Movement –From Quest for Human Rights to Demand for Black Power.