Kevin McGruder Ph.D.
Kevin McGruder is Associate Professor of History at Antioch College. His interest in community formation led to a career in community development. Now as an academic, his research interests include African American institutions, urban history, and LGBTQ history. He has a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University, an M.B.A. in Real Estate Finance from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in U.S. History from the City University of New York.
He is co-author of Witness: Two Hundred Years of African-American Faith and Practice at the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem, New York. He is author of Race and Real Estate: Conflict and Cooperation in Harlem, 1890-1920 (2015) and Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem (2021), and editor of Home at Last: The Collected Writings of AIDS Journalist LeRoy Whitfield (2022).
He is a member of the Archives and History Ministry of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and producer of “Loud as the Rolling Sea,” a podcast on WYSO radio focusing on African Americans past and present in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
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This interview is the latest installment of Loud As The Rolling Sea, which presents the stories of Black people's everyday lives, past and present, in Yellow Springs. -
Barbecue master Gabby Mason served mouthwatering soul food from several locations in Yellow Springs for years. Like many small businesses, Gabby's BBQ relied on family members (particularly Gabby's wife Mary Mason). -
For the past couple of years, we’ve brought you a series we call Loud as the Rolling Sea, which features the stories of African American elders — and that series has had a musical theme, from the first verse of the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing." -
Loud as the Rolling Sea is our series that features the stories of today’s elders–both Black and white, who were young civil rights workers in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. -
In the 1960s, Lee Robinson was a student at Central State University – when attitudes about Civil rights were polarized and, he believes, many peoples attitudes from those days have not changed. -
Hear elders from Yellow Springs telling stories about their lives and their efforts on behalf of civil rights. -
Hear from Betty Ford and Phyllis Jackson. These two women helped guide this community oral history project. Jackson especially had a passion for black history and genealogy and spent years researching her family's story.
