Gwen Etter-Lewis: “Capturing a Moment of Historic Portent: Oral History as a Catalyst for Social Change”

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This paper is based on my study of the Baha’i response to police murders in 2020 using oral history methodology. The study entitled “Anti-Black Racism: A Baha’i Response” was published in The Baha’i Faith and African American Studies (2023).

Gwen Etter-Lewis has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Michigan. She is professor emerita at Miami University of Ohio, where she taught linguistics, Black World Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is the author of My Soul is My Own: Narratives of African American Women in the Professions; coauthor with Richard W. Thomas, Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Baha’is in North America, 1898-2000; and co-editor with Michele Foster, Unrelated Kin: Race and Gender in Women’s Personal Narratives. Recently she authored a biography for young people, Attorney for Racial Justice: The Story of Elsie Austin.