Dr. Ebony Lumumba is currently an Associate Professor of English at Jackson State University where she chairs the department of English, Foreign Languages, and Speech Communication and teaches courses in global and American literatures. She received her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Mississippi, a Master of Arts in English from Georgia State University, and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Spelman College with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Dr. Lumumba specializes in postcolonial literatures of the Global South and black mothering as resistance in her research, academic publications, and instruction. She was named the 2013 Eudora Welty Research Fellow by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the Eudora Welty Foundation and was honored as Tougaloo College’s Humanities Teacher of the Year in 2014.
Dr. Lumumba is an active scholar with publications that include a chapter in From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Help: Critical Perspectives on White-Authored Texts of Black Life; an article in the Eudora Welty Review titled “‘Caught in the act of living’”: Welty as a voyeur and witness of black life”; a chapter titled “The Matter of Black Lives in American Literature: Eudora Welty’s Non-Fiction and Photography” in Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty: Twenty-first Century Approaches; and a chapter in the collection New Essays on Welty, Class, and Race titled “Demonstration of Life: Signifying for Social Justice in Eudora Welty’s ‘The Demonstrators’.” Dr. Lumumba is also an avid supporter of education and the arts. Her zeal for both is evinced in her participation in various community projects. She currently serves as a board member for the Foundation for Mississippi History, the Mississippi Humanities Council, The International Ballet Competition, New Stage Theatre, and The Mississippi Book Festival and participates on the national advisory boards of the Eudora Welty Foundation and the Mississippi Museum of Art. She is the founder of Mothers Obtaining Justice and Opportunities (MOJO)—a non-profit organization that supports mothers pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees and the owner and principle artist of OraAlease Designs—a line of stationary and original art that lifts the likenesses of Black women and girls. In her spare time, she also hosts episodes of “Write On, Mississippi”—a literary podcast sponsored by the Mississippi Book Festival.
Dr. Lumumba is happily married to her kindergarten classmate Chokwe Antar Lumumba— Honorable Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi—and the couple has two unbelievably adorable daughters, Alaké and Nubia.
Source: https://www.msmuseumart.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Lumumba-Bio.pdf