Emory Tolbert

Emory J. Tolbert is a well-known African American historian, archivist and activist.

Dr. Emory J. Tolbert

Early years

Emory Tolbert was born on December 26, 1946 to John J. and Johnie Mae Tolbert in Sanford, Florida. When he was three his family moved to Rochester, New York.^[1]

Family

Tolbert was married to Frances Jones on August 1, 1976. They have two daughters, Denise (Defoe) and Erin.

Education

Tolbert graduated cum laude from Atlantic Union College with a B.A. in History and minors in Political Science, Religion, and Secondary Education in 1968.^[2] In 1975 he graduated from UCLA with a PhD in History with an emphasis in American History and minors in African American History, African American Literature and African History.^[3] Tolbert's dissertation was on Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League chapters in Los Angeles.

Teaching

Tolbert's distinguished teaching career began at Loma Linda University in 1968 where he taught the first course in African American History there. He also taught courses on American history and the American constitution. While working on his doctorate at UCLA, Tolbert was an instructor at California State University, San Bernardino, University of Southern California, UCLA and UCSD, all in his middle to late 20s.

From 1973 to 1981 Tolbert was an assistant professor in the department of History at University of California at San Diego. At UCSD he taught the first courses in African American History and initiated an MA program in Social and Ethnic History. From 1984-1991 he was an associate and full professor at California State University at Fullerton in the department of History and the department of Afro-American and Ethnic Studies. In 1987 he became Chairman of the Afro-American and Ethnic Studies Department.

Howard University

In 1991, Tolbert assumed the position of chair of Howard University's History department. He would hold this post until 1998, then serve as chair again from 2002 to 2005, and 2009.^[3]

While at Howard Tolbert helped to incorporate a geography program; expand the public history program; initiate the historical research for the New York Burial Ground Project;^[4] directed twenty PhD dissertations; and served as chairman of over three dozen dissertation committees.

Contribution

Tolbert's specialty is Garveyism. His 1980 The UNIA and Black Los Angeles, was the first regional study of the Marcus Garvey movement.^[5] He has written and edited numerous books on the subject; served on scores of committees and panels; given hundreds of presentations;^[6] and enhanced the scholarship greatly on the subject. He has especially shed light on the effect of Garveyism in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles metropolitan area and California,^[7] conducting studies on various UNIA chapters nationwide.

Recently Tolbert has been active in the Sabbath in Africa movement (SIA), sitting on its board and giving presentations across the world.^[8] The SIA generates scholarship on Christianity in Africa, operating on the premise that Christianity is a native African religion and has survived there uninterrupted since its inception during Pentecost.^[9]

Additionally, Tolbert is known to have one of the largest personal collections of African-American memorabilia.^[10]

Courses taught

• American History and Constitution
• African American History
• Black History I, II and III
• Seminar in Black History
• Race and Ethnicity in the United States
• Seminar: Harlem Renaissance
• American Intellectual History
• Colloquium in American Social and Ethnic History
• The United States in the Twentieth Century
• Apprentice Teaching (for Ph.D. students)
• Readings in American History (for Ph.D. students)
• The American Character
• Intracultural Socialization
• American History (Minorities)
• Oral History of Ethnic America
• Black America Since 1890
• Historiography (M.A. Level)
• Western Civilization
• Introduction to Ethnic Studies
• Seminar in African American History (for M.A and Ph.D. students)
• Seminar in African Diaspora History (for MA and Ph.D. students
• Oral History
• Introduction to the Study of Civilization
• Readings in United States History
• Freshman Seminar
• Introduction to the African Diaspora I and II
• Introduction to the African Diaspora I and II (Writing)
• Masters Thesis
• Ph.D. Dissertation

Works

Books authored/edited

• Tolbert, E.J. 1980. The UNIA and Black Los Angeles. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Afro-American Studies.
• Tolbert, E.J. and P. Ruff. 1982. From Beacon Light to Thirty-First Street.
• Tolbert, E.J, senior editor. 1983. Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume 1. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Tolbert, E.J, senior editor. 1983. Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume 2. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Tolbert, E.J, senior editor. 1984. Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume 3. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Tolbert, E.J, senior editor. 1984. Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume 4. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Tolbert, E.J. and Carl E. Jackson, eds. 1986. Race and Culture in America. Edina, MN: Burgess Press.
• Tolbert, E.J., ed. 1988. A Treasure Chest of Afro-American Culture. Santa Ana: Orange County Board of Education.
• Tolbert, E.J. (Editorial Consultant). 1994. Timelines of African-American History: 500 Years of Black Achievement. Berkeley: Berkeley Publishing Group.
• Tolbert, E.J. 1998. Perspectives on the African Diaspora, Volume 1. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
• Tolbert, E.J. 2001. Perspectives on the African Diaspora, Volume 1 (Second Edition).New York: Houghton Mifflin.
• Tolbert, E.J. with E.J. Humphrey. 2001. My Soul doth magnify the Lord. Collegedale, TN: The College Press.
• Tolbert, E.J. 2001. Perspectives on the African Diaspora, Volume 2 (Second Edition). New York: Houghton Mifflin.
• Tolbert, E.J., ed. 2005. 2000 Years of Christianity in Africa. USA: The Sabbath in Africa Study Group.
• Tolbert, E.J., with Robert L. Woodfork. 2010. My Journey in the Ministry: A Recorded History of the South Atlantic Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Atlanta: South Atlanta Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

Book chapter contributions

• "Garveyism in California," in Garvey, Africa, Europe and the Americas, edited by Rupert Lewis and Maureen Warner-Lewis, Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, Kingston Jamaica, 1986.
• "The UNIA in Los Angeles, the 1920s," in People of Color in the American West, edited by Daniels et al., 1994.
• "Marcus Garvey," in A Companion to American Thought, Boston: Blackwell, 1995.
• "Paul Robeson" in Making It in America, edited by Elliott Barkan, ABC-Clio, 2001.
• "The Great Migration" in Legacy: Treasures of Black History, edited by Thomas C. Battle and Donna M. Wells with preface by John Hope Franklin. National Geographic, 2006.

Scholarly book citations

• Baker, B.J. 2005. Crucial Moments. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, pg. 7.
• Baker, B.J. 2009. African American Seventh-day Adventist Bibliography. Online Edition, pgs. 22, 39.
• Baker, B.J. 2010. People of Providence. Huntsville, AL: Oakwood University Press.
• Baker, D.W. 1991. Profiles of Service. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, pg. 146.
• Baker, D.W. 1995. Telling the Story. Loma Linda, CA: LLU Press, pgs. 47-51.
• Bandele, R.M. 2008. Black Star: African American Activism in the International Political Economy. Chicago: University of Illinois, pgs. 38-39, 190-191, 204, 219, 226, 229.
• Batker, C.J. 2000. Reforming Fictions: Native, African, and Jewish American Women's Literature and Journalism in the Progressive Era. New York: Columbia University Press, pg. 148.
• Bayes, J.H. 1982. Minority Politics and Ideologies in the United States. Grand Rapids: University of Michigan, pg. 24.
• Blodgett, G. D.W. Howe. 1976. Victorian America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pg. 173.
• Broussard, A.S. 1993. Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900-1954. Topeka: University Press of Kansas, pg. 253.
• Carson, C., P.C. Holloran, R. Luker, P.A. Russell, 1994. The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Volume II: Rediscovering Precious Values, July 1951 - November 1955. Berkeley: University of California Press, vi.
• Chall, L.P. 2002. Sociological Abstracts. Bethesda: Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, pg.2946.
• Cleaver, K., G.N. Katsiaficas. 2001. Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy. New York: Routledge, pgs. 254, 255.
• Coben, S. 1991. Rebellion Against Victorianism: The Impetus for Cultural Change in 1920s America.Oxford: Oxford University Press, pg. vii.
• Cowan, T.D., J. Maguire. 1994. Timelines of African-American History: 500 Years of Black Achievement. Berkley: Berkeley Publishing Group.
• De Graaf, L.B., K. Mulroy, Q. Taylor, eds. 2001. Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 176.
• Document Editing. 1989. Grand Rapids: University of Michigan Press, pg. 7.
• Flamming, D. 2005. Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America. Berkely: University of California Press, pg. 237.
• Fox, R.W., R.E. Fox, J.T. Kloppenberg, eds. 1995. A Companion to American Thought. New York: Blackwell Publishing, pg. 267.
• Deverell, W.F., T. Sitton, eds. 1994. California Progressivism Revisited.Berkeley: University of California Press, pg. 224.
• Duffy, D., B. Jacobs. 1981. Directory of Third World Studies in the United States. Grand Rapids: University of Michigan Press, pg. 31.
• DuPree, S.S. 1996. African-American Holiness Pentecostal Movement: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Taylor & Francis, pg. 359.
• Geterl, M.P. 2001. The Color of Race in America, 1900-1940. Boston: Harvard University Press, pg. 201.
• Gomez, M.A. 2005. Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora. New York: Cambridge University Press, pg. 191.
• Gottlieb, R.R. Freer, M. Vallianatos, P. Dreier. eds. 2005. The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City. Berkeley: University of California Press, pg. 232.
• Grant, C. 2008. Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey. New York: Oxford University Press, pg. 463.
• Hale, D.S. 2007. Races on Display: French Representations of Colonized Peoples, 1886-1940. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pg. ix.
• Hayden, D. 1997. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Boston: MIT Press, pg. xvi.
• Helly, D.O., S. Reverby. 1987. Gendered Domains: Rethinking Public and Private in Women's History : Essays from the Seventh Berkshire Conference on the History of Women. New York: Cornell University Press, pg. 164.
• Henry, C.P. 1999. Ralph Bunche: Model Negro Or American Other? New York: NYU Press, pg. 253.
• Higginbotham, E.B., L.F. Litwack, D.C. Hine. 2001. The Harvard Guide to African-American History. Boston: Harvard University Press, pg. 515.
• Hill, R.A., B. Bair. 1988. Marcus Garvey Life and Lessons: A Centennial Companion to the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. Berkley: University of California Press, pg. 430.
• Helly, D.O., S. Reverby. 1987. Gendered Domains: Rethinking Public and Private in Women's History: Essays from the Seventh Berkshire Conference on the History of Women. Ithica: Cornell University Press, 165.
• Horne, G. 2005. Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920. New York: NYU Press, pg. 248.
• Jackson, G. 2005. We're not going to take it anymore. Beckham Publishing Group, Inc., pg. 544.
• Jackson, J.P., J.P. Jackson, Jr. 2005. Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case Against Brown V. Board of Education. New York: NYU Press, pg. 213.
• Jacobs, R.N. 2000. Race, Media, and the Crisis of Civil Society: From Watts to Rodney King.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, pg. 165.
• James, W. 1998. Holding Aloft The Banner Of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America. Verso, pg. 322.
• Jones, C.E. 1998. The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered]. New York: Black Classic Press, pg. 384.
• Junne, G.H. 2000. Blacks in the American West and Beyond—America, Canada, and Mexico:A Selectively Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, pg. 214.
• Kornweibel, T. 2002. Investigate Everything: Federal Efforts to Compel Black Loyalty During World War I. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pg. 296.
• Kornweibel Jr, T. 1999. Seeing Red: Federal Campaigns Against Black Militancy, 1919-1925. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pg. 203.
• Kullen, A.S. 1994. The Peopling of America: A Timeline of Events that Helped Shape Our Nation: a Historical Perspective. Americans All, pg. 369.
• Kurashige, S. 2007. The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pg. 305.
• Lewis, Rupert and Maureen Warner Lewis. 2007. Garvey: Africa, Europe, The Americas. Austin: University of Texas.
• Luke, L.B. 2007. Identity and Secession in the Caribbean: Tobago Versus Trinidad, 1889-1980. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, pg. ix.
• Marable, M., L. Mullings. 2000. Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal: An African American Anthology. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, pg. 273.
• Mjagkij, N. 2001. Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations. New York: Taylor & Francis, pg. 314.
• Ogren, K.J. 1989. The Jazz Revolution: Twenties America & the Meaning of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press U.S, pg. 179.
• Rolinson, M.G. 2007. Grassroots Garveyism: The Universal Negro Improvement Association in the Rural South, 1920-1927. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pg. x.
• Romo, R. 1983. East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio. El Paso: University of Texas Press, pg. 201.
• Schlabach, T.F., R.T. Hughes. 1997. Proclaim Peace: Christian Pacifism from Unexpected Quarters. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, pg. 79.
• Shaw, W. 2000. Westside: Young Men and Hip Hop in L.A. New York: Simon and Schuster, pg. 331.
• Smith, C.P. 2007. Making Music in Los Angeles: Transforming the Popular. Berkeley: University of California Press, pg. 303.
• Sitton, T., W.F. Deverell. 2001. Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s. Berkley: University of California Press, 2001, pg. 158.
• Stein, J. 1991. The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society. New Orleans: LSU Press, pg. 140.
• Stokes, C., T. Meléndez, G. Rhodes-Reed. 2001. Race In 21st Century America. Austin: University of Texas Press, pg. 288.
• Taylor, Q., S.A.W. Moore. 2003. African American Women Confront the West: 1600-2000. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, pg. 26.
• Taylor, Q. 1994. The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle's Central District, from 1870 Through the Civil Rights Era. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 263.
• Thomas, Roy D. 2008. One Moment in Time: Celebrating the Pioneers Living Among Us. Washington DC: Roy D. Thomas.
• United States Political Science Documents. 1988. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh University Center for International Studies, American Political Science Association, pg. 147.
• Verney, K. 2006. The Debate on Black Civil Rights in America. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pg. 59.
• Walters, R.W. 2003. White Nationalism, Black Interests: Conservative Public Policy and the Black Community. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, pg. 308.
• Watts, J. 2005. Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood. New York: HarperCollins, pg. x.
• Watts, J. 1992. God, Harlem U.S.A.: The Father Divine Story. Berkeley: University of California Press, pg 216.
• Westney, L.X. with O.S. Westney. 2008. Just As I Am: Challenged But Confident. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing, Introduction.
• White, R., W. Deverell, J.M. Findlay. 1999. Power and Place in the North American West: In the North American West. Seattle: University of Washington Press, pg. 140.

Important journal articles

• "Black Power and Christianity," Spectrum, Spring 1970.^[11]
• "Outpost Garveyism and The UNIA Rank and File," Journal of Black Studies, March 1975.
• "Federal Surveillance of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA," Journal of Ethnic Studies, Winter 1987.
• "The Unseen Minority: Blacks in Orange County," (Co-authored with Lawrence de Graaf), Journal of Orange County Studies, 1990.
• "Slaves, Workers and Race Rebels," Journal of American Ethnic History, Fall 1998.
• "Review of The Veiled Garvey by Ula Taylor" (University of North Carolina Press, 2003) in Journal of American History, Spring 2004.

Selected conference papers and public lectures

• "Garveyism in California," International Conference on Marcus Garvey, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, 1973.
• "The Black Twenties," Annual Conference of the Organization of American Historians, Denver, Colorado, 1974.
• "The Political Renaissance in Harlem," Miami University of Ohio, 1976.
• "Recent Research on Black Nationalism in America," College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1978.
• Critique of Stephen Fortune's "Black and Jewish History," Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, New York City, 1979.
• "Black Los Angeles," Second Annual Conference on Issues in Ethnicity and Mental Health, San Diego California, 1979.
• "The Atlanta Renaissance and the Harlem Renaissance," Third Annual Conference on Issues in Ethnicity and Mental Health, San Diego, California, 1980.
• "The Garvey Movement," Center for Afro-American Studies Series, University of California, Los Angeles, 1982.
• "The Marcus Garvey Papers," National Black Studies Conference, Berkeley, California, April 1983.
• "Federal Surveillance of Black Radicals in the 1920s," University of Santa Clara, April 1983.
• "Los Angeles at Twelfth and Central," a lecture delivered for the Power of Place, an organization that restores ethnic landmarks in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, February 1984.
• "Federal Surveillance of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA," Paper read for colloquium series sponsored by the Center for Government Studies, California State University, Fullerton, April 1985.
• "Sociological Trends in American Culture," American Studies Association Annual Conference, Chairman of session and commentator, San Diego, October 1985.
• "The State Department and National Security: Investigations of Black Radicalism in World Wars I and II," Annual conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, Chairman of session and commentator, American University, Washington, D.C., June 1988.
• "Blacks in Orange County, California" San Juan Capistrano Public Library Lecture Series, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1989.
• "Garveyism in Urban and Rural Settings," International Garvey Conference, Glassboro State University, Glassboro, New Jersey, sponsored by the Marcus Garvey Foundation, November 1990.
• "Black Los Angeles Since the Watts Rebellion," University of California, Irvine, February 1991.
• "Historical Editing Projects on the African American," chairman of session and commentator, Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, Washington, D.C., November 1991.
• "Pan Africanism: Yesterday and Today," Chairman of session, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., February 1992.
• "The Evolution of Thought in the Civil Rights Movement," a series of four lectures for the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., September 1992.
• "The African Diaspora in North America," for the Global Change for Teachers Program sponsored by the University of Virginia, Falls Church, Va., November 1992.
• "The Harlem Renaissance," a series of four lectures for the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., February 1993.
• "Black, Blue and Gray: African Americans and the Civil War," a series of three lectures for the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., March–April 1995.
• "The Search for Marcus Garvey," University of Akron, Akron, Ohio, February 1998.
• Facilitator, Middle Passage Conference sponsored by National Endowment for the Humanities and Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, Howard University, July 1998.
• "Marcus Garvey – Of Vision and Mass Mobilization," chair and commentator, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland, April 1999
• "Du Bois and Garvey at the Capstone," Phi Alpha Theta Induction Ceremony, Howard University, April 2000.
• Chair and commentator, "New Perspectives in African American Economics," annual meeting of Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, October 2000.
• "The Relevance of Du Bois and Garvey" Presented at the Sandy Springs Slave Museum, Sandy Springs, Maryland, January 26, 2001
• "Who Owns History?" presented at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, February 22, 2001
• "Sabbatarian Movements in Africa," Presented at Conference on the Sabbath in Africa, Capitol Hill SDA Church, Washington, D.C., February 2002
• "Notes on the History of the Sabbath in Ethiopia," Annual Ministers and Workers Conference, Oakwood University, Huntsville Alabama, December 2003
• "Ralph Bunche and United States Domestic Policy," Commemoration of Ralph Bunche Centennial, Howard University, October 2004
• "The African Diaspora," U.S. Department of Defense, Washington, D.C., February 2005
• "The Niagara Movement: One Hundred Years Later," U S Department of Agriculture, Crystal City, Virginia, February 2005
• "The Niagara Movement," Chair of session and Commentator, Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, Buffalo, New York, October 2005
• "Walter Rodney: Prolific Historian," Walter Rodney Memorial Seminar, Howard University, October 2005
• "Facing the Last World Crisis: A Series of Three Lectures," Adventist Laypersons Services and Industries Third National Convention, Eldoret, Kenya, February 23–25, 2006
• Commentary on Mark Noll"s America’s God, History and Religion Forum, Columbia Union College, Takoma Park, Maryland, March 8, 2007
• Chair and Commentator "African Americans in Seventh-day Adventist History," Annual Meeting of the Association of Seventh-day Adventist Historians, Oakwood University, Huntsville, Alabama, April 2007
• "Finding The Future," Commencement Address, Loma Linda University, School of Science and Technology and School of Religion, Loma Linda, California, June 10, 2007
• "The Sabbath in Ethiopian History," Presented at Conference on the Sabbath in Africa, Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, September 2007
• "Graduate Research at Howard University History Department," Presented at Phi Alpha Theta induction ceremony, Columbia Union College, Takoma Park, Maryland, April 21, 2008
• "The Ethiopian Struggle: Changing the Prophetic Map," 3ABN Broadcast, Tampa, Florida, August 1, 2008.
• "Juneteenth," Keynote Speaker at Ceremony Honoring Ben Carson and James West, Johns Hopkins University, June 2009.

See also

• Marcus Garvey
• Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League
• Pan-Africanism
• Black Power
• University of California Los Angeles
• Howard University
• African Christianity

References