Joyce LadnerSpeaker and Booking Agent Information

Joyce Ladner is a Civil Rights activist, sociologist, author, and educator. Raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, she and her sister Dorie became active in the NAACP as teenagers, inspired by Emmett Till’s murder. Expelled from Jackson State for protesting, she transferred to Tougaloo College and earned a PhD in sociology from Washington University in St. Louis. As a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) member, she helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, participated in Freedom Summer, and joined major protests alongside figures like Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer. Ladner taught at Howard University for years, serving as provost and interim president (1994–95), its first woman in that role. Her pioneering books include “Tomorrow’s Tomorrow: The Black Woman” (1971), a foundational text in Black women’s studies, and “The Death of White Sociology” (1973). She has influenced policy, academia, and public discourse on race, gender, family, and urban issues.