Dr. Walter D. Greason, Ph.D.
Future of Black America
"Dr. Walter D. Greason is a professor and chair of the Department of History at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the pre-eminent digital historian in the global academy, focusing on the Black Speculative Arts, metropolitan growth, and social justice in education. Author and contributor to eleven books and over 100 academic articles over the last decade, Dr. Greason's use of VR and AR technologies transforms public engagement with history and education around the world every day."
Social science in the twentieth century routinely assumed the pervasiveness of poverty across the African continent and diaspora. These narratives maintained the hegemonic systems of European exploitation by denying the agency and authority of African-descended people. With a century of work by formal and informal scholars, a canon of African liberation has been established and laid the foundation for the intellectual insurgency of Afrofuturism. With examples like the Zora Neale Hurston festival and the T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center, activists and scholars are reshaping economic development and financial investment policies to preserve Black institutions. These strategies maximize the creativity of Black communities as material wealth to counter systems of segregation and displacement.