Tiana U. Wilson

Research Affiliate

I am a historian of 20th Century Black women’s intellectualism, Black Radicalism, and Social Movements. I am currently writing a book on the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA), the most influential Black-led, multi-racial women’s organizations to emerge from the US-based social movements of the 1970s. The TWWA was founded in NYC and then expanded to the West Coast, and established chapters in Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to this work, I’m currently working on a second project about a Black woman political prisoner by the name of Geraldine Pointer Robinson, who was wrongfully incarcerated in the late 1960s for her radical activism. Spearheading the exoneration campaign to clear her record, along with her co-defendant and fellow Black nationalist Martin Sostre, I am also rooted in community work in my hometown of Buffalo, NY. My community and scholarly pursuits have been intertwined since May 2022 when the mass shooting at Tops Supermarket sparked me and four other Buffalo natives to form the #BuffaloSyllabus, which I actively maintain. I am more broadly interested in questions around community resistance, radical politics, Black self-determination, gender, and Black liberation movements in New York, but also across the US.