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 African American, Chickasaw, and Choctaw historian who studies the intersection of Black and Native American life from the Civil War to the modern day. This focus originates from her own family history: her father’s ancestors survived Indian Removal’s Trail of Tears and were owned as slaves by Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians.
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 Indian Nations), Native American enrollment politics, and Indigeneity in North America and across the globe.
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.
Her book, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land is available for purchase at Amazon as well as at a variety of bookstores and websites.