Brown, Autumn

Autumn Brown is a Research Professional with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program and a Ph.D. Candidate in the university's Social Foundations of Education Department. Currently, she is also works as the IMLS Research Scholar for the Eddie Faye Gates Tulsa Race Massacre collection at the Helmerich Center for American Research, and a Tri-City Collective member--whose work is driven by a passion for social justice and creative expression. Autumn earned her Master's of Education from the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, Oklahoma, and her Bachelor's of Science degree from St. Gregory's University in Shawnee, Oklahoma. She has presented research at national conferences such as the American Educational Studies Association (AESA), the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the Oral History Association (OHA), and has a published chapter titled "Breaking the silence: Black women's experience with abortion" in the book Womanish Black Girls: Women Resisting the Contradictions of Silence and Voice, winner of the 2019 AESA Critics' Choice Award and the 2020 SPE Outstanding Book Award. Other publications include research on policing black women’s bodies, Black women teacher activists and Oklahoma City’s school segregation history. Her dissertation is an educational biography of Clara Luper, an educational pioneer during the period of segregation. She hopes to foreground Black women's knowledge production and contributions to contemporary education in addition to working towards (re)presenting Oklahoma as a space for radical activism.