Spencer R. Crew will speak as part of the African American Heritage House Lecture series at 3:30 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.
Crew currently works as the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History at George Mason University. This fall, he will teach “History of the Family,” in which students will consider specific historiographic debates, analyze the construction of historical narratives and bring these perspectives to current social issues.
Outside of his position as a professor, Crew served as president of the National Underground Railroad Center and as director of the National Museum of American History for nine of the 20 years he worked there. With his research based in African American and public history, he co-curated “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden,” one of the most popular Smithsonian exhibitions, and he researched and developed “Field to Factory: Afro-American Migration 1915-1940.” This exhibition was on display from 1987 to 2006, and the stories from his family inspired the exhibition. One such story was from his wife’s aunt Lillian Reuben-McNeary who herself was a part of the hundreds of thousands of Black Americans who moved North between 1915 and 1940.
Recently in 2019 and 2020, while the Smithsonian looked for a permanent director, Crew served as the interim director for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Along with his exhibition work, Crew penned a book by the same name, Field to Factory: Afro-American Migration 1915-1940, and continued focusing on place in Black Life in Secondary Cities: A Comparative Analysis of the Black Communities of Camden and Elizabeth, N.J, 1860-1920. Alongside Lonnie Bunch III, Mark G. Hirsch and Harry R. Rubenstein, Crew co-authored The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden in 2002. Later that year, he co-authored Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives with fellow authors Cynthia Goodman and Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Crew received his doctorate from Rutgers University, and in 2003, the university honored him by inducting him into the Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni.
