PERSON: Russell Rickford

Associate Professor

Russell John Rickford (born c. 1975) is an American scholar and activist who is an associate professor in the History Department at Cornell University. He has written the only in-depth biography on Betty Shabazz. Rickford’s research focuses on the black radical tradition and on black liberal culture after World War II. He lectures on American social and political history, among other subjects.

Born in Guyana, Rickford grew up in Palo Alto, California. His mother, Angela E. Rickford, is a professor of Special Education at San Jose State University and the author of I Can Fly: Teaching Narratives and Reading Comprehension to African Americans and other Ethnic Minority Students. His father, John R. Rickford, an authority on African-American Vernacular English and the author of numerous books and scholarly articles, teaches linguistics at Stanford University. Russell Rickford attended Gunn High School in Palo Alto and won a National Merit Scholarship.

He went on to study journalism at Howard University, where he also served as Alpha Phi Alpha president for two years and wrote for The Hilltop. Rickford earned his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in 1997.

Rickford started out as a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and went on to work for a public-relations firm in Philadelphia.

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