Noelle Lorraine Williams
Noelle Lorraine Williams is the director of the African American History Program at the New Jersey Historical Commission which includes oversight of the Black Heritage Trail. As a public humanities specialist, artist, researcher, and curator, her work examines the ways African Americans utilize culture to re-imagine liberation in the United States. She is a graduate of the New School for Social Research and Rutgers University – Newark and her work has been profiled in the New York Times, ArtNews, and the Star-Ledger. She is the recipient of the Giles R. Wright Award for contributions to African American History and an award from the National Academy of Design for a mural on Black women suffragists. Her research work on Newark’s nineteenth century African American activism won recognition as one of northeastern New Jersey’s first federally recognized Black underground railroad sites by the Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.
