Robert Weems, the Willard W. Garvey Distinguished Professor of Business History at Wichita State University in Kansas, is undertaking a new project to document the history of African American business in Wichita. Professor Weems is collecting artifacts and has undertaken an extensive oral history project.
“My interest in undertaking this project is linked with my research in African American business history,” Professor Weems said. “This aspect of the African American historical experience remains one of the most understudied. In the end, my methodology of conducting individual interviews, along with gathering pertinent business artifacts, should result in a database of materials that will be both useful to students and scholars, as well as help document an important aspect of Wichita history.”
Dr. Weems came to Wichita State in 2011. He spent the previous 12 years teaching at the University of Missouri at Columbia. He is the author of Business in Black and White: American Presidents and Black Entrepreneurs in the Twentieth Century (New York University Press, 2009).
Professor Weems is a graduate of Western Illinois University in Macomb. He holds master’s degrees from Boston University and the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. He earned a Ph.D. in history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
