On Monday April 28th, 2025, the Women and Gender Studies department met for our 15th annual Scholar’s Lecture. This event honors one of our faculty members and gives them a chance to discuss their current research. Dr. Yevette Richards Jordan was our lecturing scholar for this year.
Dr. Richards is a specialist in African American history, U.S. women’s history, labor studies, and Pan-Africanism. She received an MA degree from the Department of African American Studies at Yale University and MA and PhD degrees from the Department of American Studies at Yale University.
Her talk, "The Legacy of Cover Up in the 1946 Lynching of John Cecil Jones in Webster Parish, Louisiana” explored her recent research for an upcoming book of the same (or similar) name. Dr. Richards’ research dove deep into the community of Parish, Louisiana, tracing both the event itself and the longstanding community impact it had. She showed how the white families of those responsible received incredible access and opportunity in the wake of the lack of any meaningful prosecution, and how the families of the black community continue to be plagued by this traumatic history and the ongoing racial injustice it has spurred.
The community in Louisiana is currently represented by Mike Johnson in congress, a man with familial ties to the men who murdered John Cecil Jones. His position of power and policies reflect the continued racism and injustice faced by the African American community there. He and many other white conservatives have worked to erase any reference to the lynching and other similar acts of racial terror for their own political and economic advancement. This has made healing impossible in a black community that refuses to forget those who were taken from them and the horrific acts of violence that have terrorized the community for generations.
Dr. Richards’ research offers an opportunity to reckon with this history, giving solace to the descendants of Jones while challenging the white community to acknowledge and confront their own history. She also explored broader themes of generational trauma, systemic oppression, and how repeated acts of seemingly isolated violence and terror have built and reinforced a system of white supremacy that continues to hinder our democracy and communities.
In addition to Dr. Richards’ lecture, we awarded our 2025 outstanding student awards to Riley Conklin (Outstanding Thesis Award), Sarah F. Metcalfe (Outstanding Project Award), and Muge Yuce (Suzanne Scott Constantine Excellence Award). At the end of the lecture, we also honored our current program director, Dr. Anu Aneja, for her 4 years served in this role.
May 14, 2025