Charles Chavis

Charles Chavis

Associate Professor

Dr. Charles Chavis, Jr. holds a joint professorial appointment in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution and the Department of History in George Mason University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences. He is the Founding Director of the John Mitchell, Jr. Program for History, Justice, and Race, an interdisciplinary initiative dedicated to advancing research, teaching, and public engagement at the intersection of historical inquiry, racial justice, and conflict resolution.

A nationally recognized scholar, educator, and public historian, Dr. Chavis’s work examines the historical roots of racial violence, white supremacy, restorative justice, and the moral and political struggles for freedom, dignity, and democracy. His research and teaching emphasize the role of faith communities, social movements, and cross-racial alliances in confronting injustice and building pathways toward reconciliation and peace.

Dr. Chavis previously served as the Director of George Mason University’s African and African American Studies Program, where he led efforts to expand curriculum, strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration, and elevate the study of Black history, culture, and political life. His scholarship and public work have been featured in national media, academic forums, museums, and community initiatives focused on memory, racial equity, and historical truth-telling.

Through his academic leadership, public scholarship, and community engagement, Dr. Chavis continues to shape critical conversations on race, history, and justice while mentoring the next generation of scholars, leaders, and changemakers.

Dr. Chavis is a historian and museum educator whose work focuses on the history of racial violence and civil rights activism and Black and Jewish relations in the American South, and how the historical understandings of racial violence and civil rights activism can inform current and future approaches to peacebuilding and conflict resolution throughout the world. His areas of specialization include Civil Rights oral history, historical consciousness, truth racial healing, and transformation. He has received over twenty-five grants, awards, and fellowships from organizations including the Robert M. Bell Center for Civil Rights in Education, Knapp Family Foundation, American Jewish Archives, The National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Trust for Historic Preservation, National Park Service, and the US. Department of Justice.

 

Professor Chavis has published more than twenty-five refereed articles, reference articles, essays, reviews, op-editorials, chapters, and government reports and is the editor of For the Sake of Peace: Africana Perspectives on Racism, Justice, and Peace in America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020). His upcoming book, The Silent Shore: The Lynching of Matthew Williams and the Politics of Racism in the Free State (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020).

Outside of academia, Dr. Chavis  has emerged as national and regional policy advocate serving as national co-chair for the United States Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Movement and the vice chair of the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first state commission in the United States, dedicated to investigating cases of racial terror lynching.