Quincy T. Mills

Quincy Mills is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for Graduate Education in the College of Arts and Humanities, the Director of the Frederick Douglass Center for Leadership Through the Humanities, and Associate Professor of History. Before joining the faculty at UMD in 2019, he was Associate Professor of History and Director of Africana Studies at Vassar College. A native of the Southside of Chicago, he received his B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1997), MBA from DePaul University (2004), and M.A. in Social Science (1999) and Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago (2006). 

His research and teaching focus on the ways African Americans’ wages, wealth, and overall financial well-being helped shape black public spaces, political engagement, and activism. He is the author of Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America (Penn Press, 2013). With Melissa Harris-Lacewell, he coauthored “Truth and Soul: Black Talk in the Barbershop” in Harris-Lacewell's Barbershops, Bibles and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton, 2004). With Benjamin Talton he edited the anthology Black Subjects in Africa and Its Diasporas: Race and Gender in Research and Writing (Palgrave, 2011). He also edited William Still’s Reconstruction-era book The Underground Railroad Record: Narrating the Hardships, Hairbreadth Escapes, and Death Struggles of Slaves in Their Efforts for Freedom (Random House, 2019). He is currently working on his second monograph tentatively titled “Movement Money: Crises, Relief, and the Economy of Activism during the Civil Rights Movement,” which examines the relationship of white economic reprisals and Black grassroots fundraising to render visible the significance of financial security and solidarity in the struggles against racial capitalism as a humanistic goal of the Civil Rights Movement. In 2013, he was an Oscar Handlin Fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies in support of this project.

Dr. Mills has made several appearances on broadcast media. He has been interviewed by John Hanson, “In Black America,” WKUT, The Cycle, MSNBC, Mark Anthony Neal, “Left of Black,” webcast, Joe Donahue, “The Roundtable,” WAMC, Leonard Lopate Show, WNYC, Kai Ryssdal, “Marketplace,” NPR, The Kojo Nnamdi Show, WAMU, and Roland Martin, “NewsOne Now,” TV One. He has appeared in two PBS documentaries, “BOSS: The Black Experience in Business,” which aired in 2019 on the history of Black entrepreneurship and “Making Black America: Through the Grapevine,” first aired in 2023 on the history of Black self-determination, community formation, and institution building.

Dr. Mills is a committed leader and mentor. From 2019-2025, he directed the Anna Julia Cooper Workshop in Black History. In 2024-2025, he was Fellow with Breaking the M.O.L.D. Leadership Development initiative. He has served as the Director of Graduate Studies in the History department, and is currently on The Driskell Center (UMD). He is also the faculty advisor to the UMD Track and Field and Cross Country teams.