Mr. Samuel w Black

director, african american program

LocationPittsburgh, PA

Preferred pronounhe/him

Email address

Telephone number4124546391

Websiteheinzhistorycenter.org

Headshot of Samuel w Black

Biographical information

Samuel W. Black is the Director of the African American Program at the Senator John Heinz History Center. He is a former President of the Association of African American Museums (2011-2016) and served on the Executive Council and the Advisory Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life & History (ASALH) as well as the program committee of the American Alliance of Museums. Black is a member of the Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society of Pittsburgh and the former vice president of the ASALH Dr. Edna B. McKenzie Branch. He serves on the board of directors of the International Black Business Museum. He is the recipient of the Dr. John E. Fleming Award of the AAAM in 2016, a 2018 graduate of the Jekyll Island Management Institute of the Southeastern Museums Conference (SEMC) and a 2019 Fulbright Germany Transatlantic Seminar Curator of the Smithsonian Institution and Leibniz Association of Germany.

Black is the curator of award winning exhibitions, “Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era” America’s Best Weekly: A Century of the Pittsburgh Courier” “From Slavery to Freedom” and “The Vietnam War 1945-1975” (2019). He is the curator of African American historical and cultural content at the Heinz History Center including the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum.

He is the author of a number of essays, book reviews, and narratives including, “African American Photographers of Cleveland, 1930-1965” in Yet Still We Rise: African American Art in Cleveland, 1920-1970; “The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center: Museum of Conscience” in Ohio Valley History Journal. His pending articles and reviews include “African Americans in the Vietnam War” in Oxford University Bibliographies.

Black is the editor of Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era (2006) and co-author of Through the Lens of Allen E. Cole: A Photographic History of African Americans in Cleveland, Ohio (2012) and editor of The Civil War in Pennsylvania: The African American Experience (2013).