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Biography

A native of Detroit, Michigan, Bernadette Pruitt is an associate professor of history and has been a member of the Department of History since 1996. She teaches courses on the Black experience in the United States, race and ethnicity in recent history, the Black Diaspora and internal migrations, long civil rights, the Modern Civil Rights Movement, Recent United States, and Contemporary United States history. The first Black woman to earn a PhD in History from the University of Houston, she obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Texas Southern University, an Historical Black College/University (HBCU) in Houston.

An instructor, mentor, public servant, and scholar, Prof Pruitt’s recent publications include the following book chapters: “Black Migration to Houston, 1914-1945.” In A Movement in Every Direction: A Great Migration Critical Reader, 102-13, edited by Jessica Bell Brown and Ryan N. Dennis, published in conjunction with the exhibition A Movement in Every Direction: A Great Migration Critical Reader, presented at the Mississippi Museum of Art and Baltimore Museum of Art, 48-57, 85-86 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), first published in The Houston Review of History and Culture 3, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 48-57, 85-86; "The New Negro Moves Forward: Black Texans Earn Their Citizenship in World War II," with Christopher Bean and Michael Hurd in in Texas and Texans in World War II, ed. Christopher Bean (College Station: TAMU Press, 2021), 43-99; and “Beautiful People”: Community Formation in Houston, 1900–1941," in Freedom’s Racial Frontier African Americans in the Twentieth-Century West, ed. Herbert G. Ruffin III and Dwayne A. Mack (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), 45-86. Dr. Pruitt is also the author of The Other Great Migration: The Movement of Rural African Americans to Houston, 1900-1941, 2nd ed., Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life (2013; College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2017), which examines Black internal migration and community building in what becomes the fourth largest city in the United States. Pruitt’s book is one of the first scholarly attempts to address the Great Migrations within the South. The scholar won one book prize for her study, the 2014 Ottis Lock Superior Book Award with the East Texas Historical Association (ETHA). The historian is currently writing a new manuscript, “Black Women Faculty in the Texas Academy: Writing, Teaching, and Living for Future Generations,” a study that examines the history of African-descent women college professors in institutions of higher learning in Texas, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Also, with scholars Yvonne Davis Frear and LaGuana Gray, Pruitt will edit an anthology recognizing the contributions of Black women historians in the state of Texas. She also plans to write a monograph about World War II Houston and the Second Great Migration.

Dr. Pruitt also volunteers her time as a member of the academy. The historian has previously served as president of the East Texas Historical Association, on the Organization of American Historians (OAH) Committee on the Status of Women in the Historical Profession, as the past chair of the 2015 Darlene Clark Hine Book Prize Committee, also with the OAH, and on the board of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). Prof Pruitt is also co-advisor of Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society (Sigma Phi chapter) and the on-campus advisor for Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. (Kappa Mu chapter). She also serves on the SHSU Convocation Committee.

The associate professor of history also has a vibrant life outside academe. She has been a member of the Greater Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville, Texas, for over twenty years. An active church member, until recently, she has served on the senior usher board, worked as a Sunday school teacher, and taught preteens and intermediate youths as a church-school teacher. Professor Pruitt also studies Black politics and culture in history and contemporary life. In addition, the history instructor loves watching and researching nostalgic horror and science fiction films, such as Frankenstein (1931), The Son of Frankenstein (1939), The Wolf Man (1941), The Mummy’s Tomb (1942), Godzilla (1954), and Tarantula (1955) as well as enjoys classic 1970s and 1980s family sitcoms, 1970s family dramas, and 1990s-current crime dramas including Good Times, The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show, A Different World, Family Ties, The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie, Eight Is Enough, Murder She Wrote, Criminal Minds, Law and Order, and Law and Order: SVU. Her favorite film of all times is Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Her favorite books are Roots, The Warmth of Other Suns, and W. E. B. Du Bois, 2 vols. Ms. Pruitt lives in Huntsville, Texas.