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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