Summary
Professor de Jong completed her bachelor's and master's degrees in New Zealand and came to the United States in 1993 to complete a Ph.D. degree at Pennsylvania State University. She held a fellowship at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia and teaching positions at George Mason University and the University of Wisconsin-Parkside before taking a position at the University of Nevada, Reno in 2002. Her research and teaching focus on the connections between race and class and the ways that African Americans have fought for economic as well as political rights from the end of Reconstruction through the twenty-first century. She has written three books: A Different Day: African American Struggles for Justice in Rural Louisiana, 1900-1970 (University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Invisible Enemy: The African American Freedom Struggle after 1965 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010); and You Can't Eat Freedom: Southerners and Social Justice after the Civil Rights Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2016). Her current research examines tensions among family, community and justice that were evident during struggles to desegregate public schools in the mid-twentieth century United States.
Specialties
- 20th century African American history and social movements
- United States since 1945
- Racism in the post-civil rights era
Courses Taught
- HIST 293C: Introduction to African American History
- HIST 300: Historical Research and Writing
- HIST 404C/604C: Social Movements in the United States
- HIST 416B/616B: Contemporary America: The United States since 1945
- HIST 433A/633A: The African American Freedom Struggle after 1865
- HIST 479/679: Race and Ethnicity in American History
- HIST 499: Senior Seminar History
- HIST 722: Seminar in 20th-Century U.S. History
- HIST 724: Topical Seminar in US History
- CH 203: American Experiences and Constitutional Change
Publications
- A Different Day: African American Struggles for Justice in Rural Louisiana, 1900-1970 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)
- Invisible Enemy: The African American Freedom Struggle after 1965 (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)
- You Can't Eat Freedom: Southerners and Social Justice after the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016)
Education
- Ph.D., History, Pennsylvania State University, 1999
- M.A., History, University of Waikato, 1990
- B.A., History, University of Waikato, 1988