Christopher E. Manning

About

Christopher E. Manning (Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2003; B.A., University of Alabama, Huntsville, 1995) is Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches courses in African American history, oral history method and theory, and the Chicago civil rights movement. He is currently a member of the Rostenkowski Archives Advisory Committee.  Manning previously taught at Northwestern University.

Dr. Manning served as Special Advisor to the President on issues of race and diversity in the Spring of 2017. He currently serves as the Assistant Provost on Academic Diversity, a position whose responsibilities include developing programing to enhance faculty and student diversity and monitor climate issues for Lake Shore Campus and Water Tower Campus.

Manning’s research has examined African American politics in twentieth-century Chicago, exemplified by The Ties That Bind: William L. Dawson and the Limits of Black Electoral Leadership in the Twentieth Century(Northern Illinois University Press, 2009).  His article “God Didn't Curse Me When He Made Me Black” won the Henry E. Pratt Memorial Award given by the Journal of the Illinois Historical Society.  Manning is currently engaged in two book projects, one is tentatively titled N.O.L.A: An Oral History of the Hurricane Katrina Volunteers which examines the volunteer mobilization in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005; the second is a memoir entitled Army Brat: A Memoir of Racial Identity and Life as a Military Child.  He was nominated for the National Society of Collegiate Scholars Faculty of the Year Award in 2006.

Manning has served as a panelist in a number of public forums and appeared in local radio and television media to comment on historical and contemporary topics. He was the executive director of the Cook County Circuit Court Oral History Project from 2004 to 2009. He is currently the director of NOLA Oral History Project.

Research Interests

20^th Century America, African-American political and civil rights activism, black Chicago, Chicago politics and civil rights activism, ethnicity in Chicago, New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina

Courses Taught

HIST 203: American Pluralism

HIST 291: Historical Methods

HIST 379: African American History to 1865

HIST 380: African American History Since 1865

HIST 461: Twentieth Century America

HIST 483: Oral History: Method and Practice

Selected Publications

The Ties That Bind: William L. Dawson and the Limits of Black Electoral Leadership in the Twentieth Century. Northern Illinois University Press, 2009.

“God Didn’t Curse Me When He Made Me Black,” Journal of Illinois History, State Historical Society, Fall 2009.

“The Legacy of Bronzeville,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Fall 2009.

“Perspectives on the Great Migration and Black Chicago,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Volume 100, No. 4 Winter 2007-2008.