About

David M. Walton earned a dual PhD in History and African American & African Studies from Michigan State University in the summer of 2017.  He also earned a MA in World History and a Graduate Certificate in African American Studies from Eastern Michigan University. Although primarily focused on African American history; Dr. Walton’s research and teaching interests center on the African Diaspora and transnationalism with a wide range of time periods, themes, and topical specialties including Pre-Colonial African History (Slaveries and Slave Trades), the Black Atlantic World, Black Radical Thought, Southern African History, Modern African History, African American History 1877 – present, and the Civil Rights/Black Power movement. His research intersects with the histories of identity, youth and students, labor, nationalism, and race relations. These themes are addressed in his dissertation, entitled “Unapologetically Black: Parallel Institutions and Transnational Consciousness in the United States and South Africa, 1966-1982.”  Focusing on six case studies, Walton examines ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ as modern diasporic concepts and identities in the Black Power and Black Consciousness era in the United States and South Africa.  Simultaneously, “Unapologetically Black” examines the impact they had on one another’s movements.  Walton argues that ‘Black Power’ and ‘Black Consciousness’ were localized theatres of the same global movement and that they redefined ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ in ways that bore a new transnational African diasporic consciousness.