ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Kamau Pope

As part of our 30th Anniversary celebration, we’re shining the spotlight on our amazing alumni! We’re proud to feature Kamau, an AAST alum!

KAMAU POPE: BRINGING BLACK HISTORY INTO PUBLIC LIFE AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Kamau Pope ’16 has carried a commitment to community-engaged scholarship from the College of Charleston into historical research, public history, and movement work. A graduate of African American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies, Pope continues to explore how history can reach people through classrooms, exhibitions, oral histories, and collaboration.

Today, Pope is based in Durham, North Carolina, and is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Duke University. After earning an M.A. in History from the University of South Carolina, Pope has continued developing work that connects academic inquiry with the communities whose histories it explores. Pope is also co-founder of Ominira Project, LLC, and a board member of The GOOD Lounge.

A COURSE THAT EXPANDED THE POSSIBILITIES

One of Pope’s most formative undergraduate experiences was taking Dr. Mari Crabtree’s course on the Blues. The course solidified Pope’s decision to major in African American Studies and expanded an understanding of what historical scholarship could become.

Through music, culture, performance, and lived experience, the class offered ways to study history that were rigorous, accessible, and connected to people’s lives.

“It was the first time I saw academic work that felt deeply rigorous while also reaching people in meaningful and accessible ways.”

That experience helped Pope imagine scholarship beyond books and classrooms. It also established questions that continue to guide work in exhibitions, oral histories, teaching, and dissertation research: How can scholarship become more public? How can it become more collaborative? How can it be useful to the communities whose stories it tells?

APPROACHING HISTORY WITH ACCOUNTABILITY

Pope describes African American Studies as an education in curiosity, humility, and accountability. The program encouraged an understanding of history shaped by memory, culture, relationships, and everyday people alongside archives and institutions.

That perspective continues to inform Pope’s work as a public historian and movement historian. It means asking whose voices have been overlooked, whose knowledge is being valued, and how research can be conducted with communities.

“More than any one skill, the program taught me that scholarship carries a responsibility.”

For Pope, studying the past should also help people understand the present and imagine different futures. That belief connects academic work with participation in community-based movements.

RECOGNITION AND COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Pope’s academic and community work has been recognized both at the College of Charleston and beyond.

Among those recognitions are:

• Grace O’Connor Advocacy Award, Duke University Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, 2024
• Charleston’s 50 Most Progressive, CHARLIE Magazine, 2015
• African American Studies Capstone Project Award, College of Charleston, 2016
• Consuela Francis Outstanding Student Award, College of Charleston, 2016
• Community Activism Award, College of Charleston, 2016

Pope’s involvement also includes membership in Southerners on New Ground (SONG) and the American Studies Association. Areas of expertise include African American history, LGBTQ+ history, social movement history, oral history, political education, movement strategy, philanthropy, and strategic facilitation.

STUDYING AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY IN CHARLESTON

Pope encourages students across disciplines to consider African American Studies as preparation for asking stronger questions, recognizing complexity, and understanding how the past continues to shape contemporary life.

Charleston gives that work particular significance. Pope points to the city’s histories of slavery, racial violence, resistance, and Black creativity as essential to understanding the place where students live and learn. African American Studies provides language and context for engaging with those histories.

For Pope, the program connected the different parts of an undergraduate education and established an approach to scholarship that continues today.

“For me, African American Studies was never separate from the rest of my education. It became the thread that connected everything else.”