Watch Dr. Roberts discuss the University of Pittsburgh’s groundbreaking anti-Black racism course
historian, California girl, gym rat
historian, California girl, gym rat
"Combining family history and rigorous research, this brilliant text deepens our understanding of post-Civil War Reconstruction by interrogating what happened in Indian Territory, revealing the layered wreckage wrought on the Native nations and formerly enslaved Africans, all entrapped in the pernicious logic of settler-colonialism."
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
Alaina E. Roberts is an award-winning historian who studies the intersection of Black and Native American life from the Civil War to the modern day. She is currently an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Roberts holds a Doctorate in History from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Arts in History, with honors, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
She writes, teaches, and presents public talks about Black and Native history in the West, family history, slavery in the Five Tribes (the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Nations), Native American enrollment politics, Indigeneity in North America and across the globe, Black and Native American portrayals in the media, and identity.
Her first book, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land is now available for purchase. In addition to multiple academic articles, her writing has appeared in news outlets like the Washington Post, High Country News, and TIME magazine, and she has been profiled by CNN, Smithsonian Magazine, and the Boston Globe.