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About T. DeWayne Moore

Hi, my name is T. DeWayne Moore. 
I am an Assistant Professor of History in the Division of Social Sciences at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) in Texas, and I administer several grant-funded digital humanities, archival processing, digitization, oral history, and historical archaeology projects for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities Texas, Getty Images, and the Summerlee Foundation. Please navigate to the grants section to read all of the grant proposals currently in-process.

I previously worked as an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of History at Bowling Green State University, where I served on the Graduate and Public History Committees as well as served as Digital Media Editor. I earned my Ph.D. from the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the Department of History at the University of Mississippi, and I hold an M.A. from the Public History Program in the History Department at Middle Tennessee State University. I have lectured and led seminars about Early and Modern American History, The Civil War & Reconstruction, Special Topics in African American History, Critical Thinking, and Historical Society Administration.

I also serve as Field Secretary of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, a historical consulting firm promoting reparative justice and responsible practices regarding the memorialization of African Americans and the maintenance of abandoned cemeteries. After I conducted research that ended a legal dispute over cemetery access—between landowners and the African Americans descendants of the interments in a cemetery located on private land, I collaborated with other descendants of blues artists to research, design, and install memorials that transformed several endangered cemeteries into international tourist destinations. Our work builds on the growing interest in inclusive memorialization processes by emphasizing the role memorials play in the process of racial reconciliation. From the framework that regards memorials as instruments of reparations that keep the past visible, we encourage people to see monuments as symbolic reparative tools that facilitate historic preservation.

In October 2021, the University Press of Mississippi publish several of my essays (33,000 words) in Mississippi Fiddle Tunes, Commercial and Informal Recordings, 1920-2018. In addition to mining digital archives and compiling primary source documents from county courthouses across the state to compose fresh and richly contextualized biographies about African American fiddlers and their families from slavery to the early recording era, I provided unseen documents and photographs for the essays of one of my co-authors, country music discographer Tony Russell, and I collaborated during the extensive field research process of the editor, Harry Bolick. 

I also began exposing the myth of southern redemption through a love of Black music in “Revisiting Ralph Lembo: Complicating Charley Patton, the 1920s Race Record Industry, and the Italian American Experience in the Mississippi Delta,” an article published in the December 2018 volume of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal. By demonstrating the powerful research potential of digital archives and re-examining oral histories from the 1960s, I not only restored the good name of an Italian immigrant and talent scout for southern musicians in 1920s Mississippi, but I also began a very rewarding collaboration with a group of ethnomusicologists, professional archivists, and the descendants of southern musicians.

My current book project, tentatively titled “Forgotten in the Place it was Born and Raised”: A History of Mississippi Action for Community Education and the Origins of Blues Tourism in the Politics, Performances,  and Bicentennial Protests in the Queen City, examines the distortions of African American history and culture in the tourism narratives of the 1970s Mississippi Delta, how those narratives have affected policy decisions on the state level, and the ways that African Americans and others have attempted to resist and revise the popular narrative about the blues to educate and heighten the consciousness of African Americans.  My research also complicates the narrative framing of the movement and examines the practice of public history as a means to continue the black freedom struggle in the 1970s. By examining the ways that community activists in Mississippi Action for Community Education helped people on the lowest rungs of the social, political, and economic ladder, my research demonstrates how they picked up the mantle of the Mississippi movement and wrestled away from large corporations, private foundations, and federal agencies the tools required to combat poverty, empower communities, build wealth, and secure a share of the “American Dream.”  Though I am currently revising the manuscript for publication, the Southern Cultures journal, published by UNC Press for the Center for the Study of the American South, published one chapter, “Worth Westinghouse Long Jr.: Creating Dangerously in The Land Where the Blues Began,” in its special “Documentary Moment” edition in the Spring 2020.

Positions

January 2022 - Present Assistant Professor of History, Prairie View A&M University Division of Social Sciences
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January 2014 - Present Executive Director, Mt. Zion Memorial Fund
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August 2020 - December 2021 Lecturer I, Prairie View A&M University Division of Social Sciences
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August 2019 - June 2020 Assistant Teaching Professor, Bowling Green State University ‐ Department of History
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Curriculum Vitae




Grants

2024 - Present A Community-Engaged, Participatory Historic Preservation Project for African American Cemeteries
National Endowment for the Humanities - NOT FUNDED
Community & Cultural Resilience Grant
Role: Principal Investigator & Co-Writer
Colleague(s): Michael Garet Madison, Abdul Ajibola, Shannon Evans, Corey Crowder, Tara White, Tavon Pugh
$149,724.72
2024 - Present Broadening Participation in Archaeology and Anthropology: Training MSI Students in Field Methods at Free Black Community Sites in Southeast Ohio
National Science Foundation
Build & Broaden
Role: Co-Principal Investigator
Colleague(s): Cory Crawford, Jason Herrmann, Nancy Tatarek, Andrea Frohne
$1,784,722
2024 - Present Preventing the Erasure of Black Churches in East Texas
National Endowment for the Humanities - NOT FUNDED
Public Impact Projects at Smaller Organizations
Role: Consultant
Colleague(s): Sabrina Francis & Henry Koshy
$25,000
2024 - Present Preventing the Erasure of Black History in Texas
Texas State Library & Archives Commission - FUNDED!!!!
TexTreasures
Role: Principal Investigator & Writer
Colleague(s): Sabrina Francis, Henry Koshy, Evelyn Davis, and the Waller County Historical Society
$49,748
2023 - Present 2023-24 RL Boyce Picnic
Visit Mississippi - FUNDED!!!!
Tourism
Role: Co-Principal Investigator
Colleague(s): Amy Verdon, RL Boyce
$10,000
2023 - Present Expanding our Community-Engaged, Participatory WebAtlas of African American Burial Grounds
Jefferson National Parks Association - NOT FUNDED
Lower Mississippi Delta Initiative Local Heritage Grants 2023
Role: Principal Investigator & Co-Writer
Colleague(s): Michael Garet Madison, Shannon Evans, Corey Crowder, Tara White, Tavon Pugh
$24,988
2023 - Present Expanding the MZMF's Organizational Capacity
Mississippi Arts Commission - FUNDED!!!!
Operating Capital Grant
Role: Principal Investigator & Co-Writer
Colleague(s): Shannon Evans & Corey Crowder
$4,750
2023 - Present He Sold Hisself to the Devil: A History of Tommy Johnson, Blues, and the Black Freedom Struggle in the Brown-Loess Belt, 1815 to 2020
National Endowment for the Humanities - NOT FUNDED
Awards for Faculty at HBCUs
Role: Principal Investigator & Writer
$30,000
2023 - Present Historic Preservation in Glen Allan: The 1940s Juke Joint of Alonzo Chatmon
Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area - FUNDED!!!!
Role: Principal Investigator & Writer
Colleague(s): Dr. Carroll Van West, Dr. Brian Mitchell, Milo Reed, Augusta Palmer, Shannon Evans, Corey Crowder, and Ollie Morganfield
$59,000
2021 - Present A Community-Engaged, Participatory Historic Preservation Project for African American Blues Communities
American Historical Association - FUNDED!!!!
Grants to Sustain and Advance the Work of Historical Organizations Program
Role: Principal Investigator & Writer
Colleague(s): Shannon Evans, Abdulrahman Ajibola, T.M. Garret, Tavon Pugh, Emily Hilliard, and Corey Crowder
$61,323.61
2021 - Present Archaeological Study of Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery
The Summerlee Foundation - FUNDED!!!!
Texas History Grants
Role: Principal Investigator
Colleague(s): Nesta Anderson, Chet Walker, and Azzurra Cox
$19,941
2021 - Present PVAMU Center for Oral History
Humanities Texas - FUNDED!!!!
Covid Relief Grants 2021
Role: Co-Principal Investigator & Writer
Colleague(s): Marco Robinson, Kristy Bradford, Justin Bryant, Ayodeji Iyanda, Phyllis Earles, Kennedy Wallace
$20,000
2021 - 2023 Prairie View A&M University Photo Digitization
GettyImages - Successful
Getty Images Photo Archive Grants for HBCUs
Role: Writer
Colleague(s): Kristy Bradford, Phyllis Earles, Marco Robinson, Melanye Price, Henry Jones
2021 - 2023 The Digital PV Panther Project
National Endowment for the Humanities - Successful
American Rescue Plan
Role: Principal Investigator & Writer
Colleague(s): Kristy Bradford, Marco Robinson, Phyllis Earles, Noel Estwick, Miguell Caesar, Sheena Wilson
$447,104.32
2022 - 2022 2022 RL Boyce Picnic
Visit Mississppi - Successful
Tourism
Role: Co-Principal Investigator
Colleague(s): Amy Verdon
$4,000
2021 - 2022 2022 RL Boyce Picnic
Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area - Successful
Heritage Tourism & Festivals
Role: Co-Principal Investigator
Colleague(s): Amy Verdon, RL Boyce
$10,000
2021 - 2022 Enabling Access to Former PVAMU Professors and Administrators
Texas State Library & Archives Commission - Successful
TexTreasures Original 2022
Role: Consultant & Writer
Colleague(s): Phyllis Earles, Miguell Caesar, Sheena Wilson
$25,000
2021 - 2021 He Sold Hisself to the Devil: A History of Tommy Johnson, Blues, and the Black Freedom Struggle in the Brown-Loess Belt, 1815 to 2020
PVAMU Mellon Center for Faculty Excellence - Successful
Faculty Enhancement Program
Role: Principal Investigator & Writer
Colleague(s): Dr. Marvin Haire
$900
2021 Preserving Our History through Assessment
National Endowment for the Humanities - Successful
Preservation Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions
Role: Writer
Colleague(s): Phyllis Earles, Lisa Stafford
$15,000
2021 Redressing the Legacy of Slavery & Segregation at AASLH
Society of Southwest Archivists - Successful
State Partnerships and Outreach Fund
Role: Principal Investigator & Writer
Colleague(s): Dr. Marco Robinson, Dr. Coiette Gaston, Dr. Matthew Washington, and Dr. Brian Mitchell
$500
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Professional Service and Affiliations

2023 - Present Committee Member, State Partnerships and Outreach Committee (SPOC), Society of Southwest Archivists
2021 - Present Member, American Association for State & Local History
2021 - Present Member, The Heritage Society at Sam Houston Park
2021 - Present Member, Waller County Texas Historical Commission
2020 - Present Member, American Historical Association
2014 - Present Member, The Blues Foundation
2010 - Present Member, National Council on Public History
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Honors and Awards

  • 2023 - Outstanding Professor Award - PVAMU Mellon Center for Faculty Excellence
  • 2017 - Oakley Award - Nomination Writer - The Association for Gravestone Studies
  • 2011 - Outstanding Senator Award - Univ. of Mississippi Graduate Council
  • 2010 - The Bart McCash Award for Outstanding Work in History - Middle Tennessee State University History Department


Education

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September 2021 - October 2021 Virtual Residency, Fellow, University of Maryland at College Park ‐ Project STAND
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2010 - 2018 Ph.D. in US History, Slavery, and the African Diaspora, University of Mississippi
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2008 - 2010 M.A. in Public History, Archival Administration & Historic Preservation, Middle Tennessee State University
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1996 - 2001 B.S. in Mass Communications, Middle Tennessee State University
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Contact Information

111 John B. Coleman Library, Prairie View, TX 77446
936-261-3741

Email:



Books (6)

Films (2)

Currently in Production

Journal Publication (4)

Issues and Opinions (3)