Crystal R. Sanders is an award-winning historian of the United States in the twentieth century. Her research and teaching interests include African American History, Black Women's History, and the History of Black Education. She received her BA (cum laude) in History and Public Policy from Duke University and a Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University. She is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Previously, she was an Associate Professor of History and the former Director of the Africana Research Center at Pennsylvania State University. During the 2020-2021 academic year, she was a fellow at the National Humanities Center.
Sanders is the author of A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi's Black Freedom Struggle published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2016 as part of the John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture. The book won the 2017 Critics Choice Award from the American Educational Research Association and the 2017 New Scholar’s Book Award from Division F of the American Educational Research Association. The book was also a finalist for the 2016 Hooks National Book Award. Sanders’ work can also be found in many of the leading history journals including the Journal of Southern History, the North Carolina Historical Review, and the Journal of African American History. She is currently writing a book on black southerners' efforts to secure graduate education during the age of Jim Crow.
Sanders is the recipient of a host of fellowships and prizes. These honors include the C. Vann Woodward Prize from the Southern Historical Association, the Huggins-Quarles Award from the Organization of American Historians, and the Equity Award from the American Historical Association. She has also received an Andrew Mellon Graduate Fellowship in Humanistic Studies, a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a Visiting Scholars Fellowship at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.