Daughters of Greatness: Deborah Douglas

Deborah D. Douglas is author of the “U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places, and Events That Made the Movement,” the first-ever travel guide to follow the official civil rights trail in the South, and a contributor to “Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019.” Among her many recognitions, she received Chicago’s prestigious Studs Terkel Award and the Society of American Travel Writers 2021 Guidebook of the Year.

Douglas is a senior lecturer and director of the newly created Midwest Solutions Journalism Hub at Northwestern University. She is a founding editor in chief of The Emancipator, a digital platform that reimagines abolitionist newspapers for a new day. She previously served as the Eugene S. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor at DePauw University, senior leader with The OpEd Project, amplifying underrepresented expert voices, and founding managing editor of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism.

While teaching at Northwestern University, she spearheaded a graduate investigative journalism capstone on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and taught best practices in Karachi, Pakistan. Douglas’ adventures in thought leadership were seeded at the Chicago Sun-Times where she served as Deputy Editorial Page Editor/Columnist.

Douglas’ reporting and opinions have been published widely, including The Guardian, Ms, ProPublica, Time, The Boston Globe, American Prospect, VICE News, The Crisis, USA Today and O, The Oprah Magazine. In 2016, her reporting on Black women and erasure was cited by The New York Times magazine.

A product of the Great Migration, Deborah D. Douglas is Northern-born and Southern-rooted.