Faculty
Priscilla A. Dowden, Ph.D
Associate Professor
Curriculum Vitae
Priscilla A. Dowden is Assistant Professor of History at the University
of Missouri where she teaches a variety of courses on African American
history, United States history since 1865, and the history of St.
Louis. Her scholarly interests include social welfare and civic
activism among African Americans during the interwar period of
WWI and WWII. Prof. Dowden has published an article, "Over
This Point We Are Determined to Fight: The Urban League of St.
Louis in Historical Perspective, Gateway Heritage (Spring 1993)
and her first book, Urban Citizens: African Americans and Social
Welfare Activism in Jim Crow St. Louis, is forthcoming from the
University of Missouri Press, Winter 2004.
Prof. Dowden is currently engaged in several scholarly projects,
including: the Encyclopedia of the Great Migration (Greenwood Press,
forthcoming 2005) and a book chapter, “To See Past the Differences
to the Fundamentals: Racial Cooperation Within the League of Women
Voters of St. Louis, 1920 – 1946. She has been a featured
scholar in several historical documentaries, including: “Sing
It, Tell It”, a documentary exploring the African-American
musical heritage of Missouri, created by Public Interest Films
of Berkeley, California; “Decades”, a series on the
history of St. Louis since the 1904 Worlds Fair, 1997; and most
recently, “Made in the U.S.A.: East St. Louis”, 2003.
A native St. Louisan, Dowden was educated in the St. Louis Public
schools. She holds a B.A. in History from the University of Missouri – St.
Louis, a M.P.S. in Africana Studies from Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York, and a Ph.D. in History from Indiana University – Bloomington.
She is a proud resident of the City of St. Louis where she resides
with her husband, a daughter currently away at college, and their
dog ‘Spunky’.
To contact Dr. Dowden-White please use the following email padhist@umsl.edu