Malinda Maynor Lowery

Malinda Maynor Lowery is a historian and documentary film producer who is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. In July 2021, she joined Emory University as the Cahoon Family Professor of American History after spending 12 years at UNC-Chapel Hill and 4 years at Harvard University. Her second book, "The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle," is a survey of Lumbee history from the eighteenth century to the present, written for a general audience. Her first book, "Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation." It won several awards, including Best First Book of 2010 in Native American and Indigenous Studies.

She has written over twenty book chapters or articles on topics including American Indian migration and identity, school desegregation, federal recognition, religious music, and foodways. She has also published essays for popular audiences in places like the New York Times, Oxford American, and Daily Yonder. She has won fellowships and grants from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Sundance Institute, the Ford Foundation, and others.

Films she has produced include the Peabody Award-winning "A Chef’s Life," Somewhere South, Road to Race Day, the Emmy-nominated Private Violence, In the Light of Reverence, and two short films, Real Indian and Sounds of Faith, both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Her current projects include essays on the shared history of Black and Indigenous Americans and a media experience on humor and racial stereotypes with the Smithsonian Institution.