Jeanne Theoharis

Jeanne Theoharis is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is also a Distinguished Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Early life

Jeanne Theoharis was born to activist Nancy Artinian and professor Athan Theoharis. She was raised in Fox Point, Wisconsin a village in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin near the campus of Marquette University where her father taught. She has two siblings Liz Theoharis co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, and George Theoharis a professor of education, at Syracuse University.

Career

Jeanne Theoharis graduated from Harvard College in 1991 with dual concentrations in Afro-American, and Women's Studies. She then went on to pursue a PhD, at the University of Michigan in American Culture. Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College at the City University of New York (CUNY). In her work as a political science professor she specializes in contemporary politics of race and gender, social policy, urban studies and 20th century African American history.

Theoharis is also the author of numerous books and articles on the Black freedom struggle, including the NAACP Image award-winning The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and A More Beautiful and Terrible History, which won the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Prize in Nonfiction. Theoharis' book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks was adapted into an award-winning documentary directed by Johanna Hamilton and Yoruba Richen and executive produced by Soledad O'Brien for NBC-Peacock, where she served as a consulting producer. The documentary won a Peabody Award and a Television Academy Honor Award.

In 2013, Theoharis co-created, a roundtable discussion program entitled Conversations in Black Freedom Studies at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture with Sarah Lawrence professor Komozi Woodard, and Lehman College professor Robyn C. Spencer-Antoine. The series features a roundtable of scholars and writers on the first Thursday of each month speaking on a topic in Black history, usually centered around a new book(s) in the field.

Theoharis has also worked as a faculty coleader in the Narrating Change, Changing Narratives research group of the 2014-2016 Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research.

Works

Essays Theoharis, Jeanne, 2016. "MLK Would never shut down a freeway and 6 other myths about the civil rights movement and Black Lives Matter", The Root, July 15. Theoharis, Jeanne, Burgin, Say, 2015. "Rosa Parks wasn't Meek, Passive or Naive--and 7 Other Things You Probably Didn't Learn in School", The Nation, December 1. Marchevsky, Alejandra, and Jeanne Theoharis, 2006. Not working: Latina immigrants, low-wage jobs, and the failure of welfare reform. NYU Press. Marchevsky, Alejandra, Theoharis, Jeanne, 2016. "Why It Matters That Hillary Clinton Championed Welfare Reform", The Nation, March 1. Coauthored: "Charlottesville belies racism’s deep roots in the North".

Books Theoharis, J. (2025). King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South. The New Press. Theoharis, J. (2013). The rebellious life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. Beacon Press.

Editor

Jeanne F. Theoharis, Komozi Woodard, eds. Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940-1980, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003,

Awards and honors

2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

2014 NAACP Image Award, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Award for Nonfiction, A More Beautiful and Terrible History; The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

2022 Peabody Award, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (documentary)

2023: Television Academy Honors, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (documentary)