Education 

A.B. Princeton University 
M.A. Yale University 
M.Phil. Yale University 
Ph.D. Yale University 
 
Melissa N. Stuckey joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina as Associate Professor of History and Director of Public History in 2023. Her research interests center on African American communities and institutions, Black migration movements, and early twentieth century Black freedom struggles. Prior to coming to USC, Stuckey held faculty positions at the University of Oregon and Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina.  

Stuckey is currently overseeing the rehabilitation of Elizabeth City State University’s historic Rosenwald Practice School building and its Principal’s House, both built in 1922. Since 2018, she has been awarded over $2.5 million for this project from the National Park Service, the Institute of Museum of Library Services, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, including $1.675 million awarded in 2023.  

Committed to engaging the public in important conversations about African American history, Stuckey is also involved in public history projects in North Carolina (mapping segregation-era African American businesses in Elizabeth City and African American cemetery preservation), South Carolina (Reconstruction-era Beaufort, SC), and Oklahoma (mapping Boley, Oklahoma’s business district).  

Stuckey is author of several articles and book chapters, including “Boley, Indian Territory: Exercising Freedom in the All-Black Town,” published in 2017 in the Journal of African American History and “Freedom on Her Own Terms: California M. Taylor and Black Womanhood in Boley, Oklahoma” published in This Land is Herland: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma, 1870s to 2010s (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021). Dr. Stuckey is currently completing her first book, entitled “All Men Up”: Seeking Freedom in the All-Black Town of Boley, Oklahoma, which interrogates the Black freedom struggle in Oklahoma as it took shape in the state’s largest all-black town and a scholarly article about the ECSU Rosenwald Practice School and its rehabilitation.  

Stuckey teaches a variety of courses in Public History and African American History. She earned her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University and her A.B. from Princeton University.