African history is power, and Delia Gillis is delivering the passport to cultural freedom. 

Recognized as Dr. Gillis, and lovingly known as Dr. G, her students and peers are utterly familiar with her conscious efforts, enlightening lectures, research, and authorship surrounding the African Diaspora. This is just a part of the total package that makes her a beloved professor and griot among the Black community at home and abroad. Her teachings, abundance of accolades, awards, and honors form a distinguished record of service to her community very few can match.

When it comes to honing her craft, Dr. Gillis, whose career catapulted into academia after working in mass communications and business, is one lady who tirelessly puts in work to illuminate the past so we can travel forward. 

A quick review of her professional background as a historian reveals a groundbreaking event. After obtaining postgraduate degrees, namely a master of arts in history from the University of Central Missouri (UCM) and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Missouri (Mizzou), she rose the ranks and broke barriers in 2006 when she became the first African-American woman president of the Missouri Conference on History, a title she still holds to this day. 

“I’m a part of the first generation of civil rights babies that have been able to go into the open door and break some of those barriers. Sometimes, it’s been a very lonely place because you’ve been the only one or one of few, and you’re constantly having to break down those barriers.” 

With a solid foundation and track record of establishing initiatives geared towards African-American content, where she was often the “go to person," Dr. Delia Gillis would boldly march on to become founder and director of the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Central Missouri. 

No doubt, the each one teach one concept is profound in Dr. Gillis’ journey, and she extends credit to other notable scholars for their role in her success. As a graduate student at Mizzou she worked alongside Dr. Sundiata Cha-jua, Dr. Robert Weems, Dr. Arvarh Strickland, Dr. David Roediger, Dr. Jean Allman, Dr. Carolyn Dorsey and, last but not least, Dr. Noliwe Rooks at the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC).

Each of these prominent intellects helped to shape Dr. Gillis’ impact in the African history arena. Before founding the Center, she also worked with several student organizations and symposiums, specifically Brown v. Board of Education in 2004, and, in her early 30s, had been a senior faculty member of the college of arts and sciences at UMKC.

The mother, history professor, and untraditional scholar, with a multitude of leadership posts, including the Fall 2019 faculty director of the Missouri Africa Program at the University of Ghana, exudes authority, intelligence, poise, grace, and substance – she’s a woman who is mentally armed and prepared. 

But nothing in Dr. Gillis’ career spanning three decades is more consistent than the gravitational pull of her small-town roots and her innate ability to “look back” to advance the African American agenda. Sankofa is a word in the Akan language of Ghana that means “go back and get it” and can translate as “to look into one’s past in order to move forward.” This is the common denominator in Dr. Gillis’ personal and professional life – it’s her Sankofa way. 

Small Town Upbringing, Big Heart for History

What might surprise you is where this focus on looking back to move forward began – the Commonwealth of Virginia – in rural towns dripping with history. It was there in those small towns that she absorbed and witnessed what would become a fundamental part of her life. 

“I’m a 10th generation Virginian, where farmers grow tobacco. I was born in South Hill, grew up in Boydton, a confederate town, and ended up in neighboring Chase City, which was a reconstruction town. Boydton is located in Mecklenburg County, on the border of North Carolina,” she says. Mecklenberg County had the largest percentage of slaves at the onset of the Civil War," she educates.

Dr. Gillis grew up in a culturally affirming family where she was nurtured by a phenomenal woman, who was a reading teacher, a father who was a brick mason and had loving grandparents to light the way. “I can trace my family’s European ancestry back to 1619, which goes all the way back to the English Channel Islands into the 1400s. My mother’s maternal line includes the Temne people of northwestern Sierra Leone, also a rural area.” Like many, she’s making new discoveries each day and hopes to one day reveal the story of her family’s origin.  

At an early age, she took interest in history. It gave her a sense of collective responsibility. History remains her favorite subject to this day, and she uses it as a tool to help the African American community look forward to what is next. The knowledge she gains transforms into a gift with unlimited unwrapping opportunities for each generation. 

It hadn't always been that way.  Eventually, her first love would be put on the backburner. She started out working in banking at American Express (AMEX) because, “Part of that generation is you need a job that pays,” she says. “If you wanted to be an artist or historian, that generation said, ‘No, we’re not doing that.’” Despite the recognition that comes with a career in banking, especially with an undergraduate degree in business like she has, Dr. Gillis decided that banking was not fulfilling for her. It didn't make her soul sing. 

That’s when she pursued her master’s at UCM, then went on to get her Ph.D at Mizzou. The rejection of a career in banking was the pivotal point that led to following the cup that was running over in her heart – history.

“My first tenure track teaching position was at UMKC. I had an offer to come back to UCM, and I had an offer to go to UMKC. I took the UMKC position because it would afford me the opportunity to teach in South Africa." She later returned home to UCM, which she has dubbed her "M.A. alma mater," to teach where she remains today.

The Great Escape from Rural Life and A Chocolate Dream Unrealized

The first 17 years of Dr. Gillis’ life were spent in Virginia before skipping the 11th grade and traveling the world. Her interests were more in harmony with history and government whereas other students had their sights set on other avenues. “I petitioned to take world geography instead of home-economics,” she says. 

She graduated at 16 years old with grand dreams of moving to the “Chocolate City,” Washington, D.C. However, the universe had other locations in mind. Ironically, every one of them were small towns and rural areas whether in the States or overseas. "I really value the travel experiences early on because it helped to set me apart and make people look at me in the room a little differently.”

Because of those voyages, she learned to speak a little German. As an Air Force wife, she lived in Germany, where she worked at American Express “AMEX.” In 1990, she landed in Knob Noster, Missouri, meaning “our two hills.”  It’s funny how we try to run away from small town life, but it has a way of attaching itself to us, remaining persistently present like a leech. At this point in our discussion, Dr. Gillis began to burst out in laughter. 

When you’re from a small town in the south, you tend to be an alchemist in creating your destiny. Dr. Gillis’ small town upbringing definitely gives her an edge in navigating life in unfamiliar territory. 

Dr. Gillis is as far as she could be from her geographical dream as a young woman. She realizes that small towns are everything she was trying to escape, yet it is embedded in everything she does.

“My desire to go to D.C. to the “Chocolate City” will never be realized. What it looked like as a young person is not where I want to live my life now. It’s not really who I am.”

Dr. Gillis’ Most Humbling Experience

We, as Black women, bear so much in our daily walks of life. Many of our accomplishments come with a unique set of struggles, and Dr. Gillis can relate. 

Dr. Gillis sums up her experience as the first Black woman president of the Missouri Conference on History with two words – “humbling and bittersweet.” Even though there were amazing accomplishments during her tenure, she had a bumpy road in leadership. Combined with the passing of her father just a month after the signature event, this time proved to be a challenge in her life. 

“I experienced a lot of microaggressions in the role and didn’t get the support that I needed, or what I felt I deserved or earned. I thought that I was accepted among my peers and thought that I would be able to lead the department as a department chair or dean, but that taught me that I wasn't accepted.

It taught me that despite my credentials, despite the fact that I had done numerous conferences and was known for bringing people to campus and events – whether it was because of my age, color of my skin, or being a woman, what have you – that I could lead, but they weren’t gonna follow.”

Dr. Maya Angelou said, “Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.” Dr. Gillis stood up for herself and pressed on with a new venture and outlook. She made the ultimate decision that it wasn’t about having to prove herself to anyone, it was about the betterment of her students. At this moment, she knew she had to switch up how she moves as a leader and educator.

“I told myself, ‘I cannot have a  traditional leadership role.’ I’m not going to rise through those ranks with stress and a lot of heartache, which I was not willing to sacrifice at that time because I’m a mother. I have a son who’s getting ready to graduate from high school, I have a toddler, and they always come first."

In 2007, without a second thought, Dr. Gillis started the Center of Africana Studies at UCM to bring those resources together for her students. 

"It made sense for me to start the Center from that perspective and it makes sense because it’s about putting together resources. All of my energy went into doing whatever I could to elevate my students and give them extra mentorship and opportunities.”

So many are grateful for Dr. Gillis following her intuition. Her students appreciate her for providing them with realistic insights into the challenges and opportunities in life, and for equipping them with the tools needed to impact and build their own communities. This is reflected in the personal and professional achievements they’ve shared with Dr. Gillis over the years.

“I’m so proud of them in terms of their accomplishments in graduate school, their professions, travels, and their families. I just love seeing them live very full and rich lives. It makes me so proud just to have been a small part of their journey.” And when Dr. Gillis sees her students dropping gems here and there on social media, she basks in the ambiance of being able to sit back, shake her head and say, “Yeah, they learned a few things.”

The Road to Founding the Center for Africana Studies at UCM

Launching anything doesn’t come easy and many times the barrel of resistance is sure to stare you in the eye. For Dr. Gillis, initially, the name of her organization was not well received. 

“I had to fight with my dean because I was told that I didn’t have a national brand. I said, ‘To me, the Center is a place, it’s a space for synergy, it’s a place for us where we can pull these resources.’ We didn’t have a Black culture house, so it was that space for that. It was a space for like-minded student organizations." 

Out of humble beginnings, the Center for Africana Studies was born in Dr. Gillis’ faculty office. Yes, her office was home base for the entire operation before the major move of getting a physical space of its own. After some time, the Center moved into the old women’s studies office, which Dr. Gillis describes as “a beautiful spot overlooking one of the courtyards.” 

To generate funding for the Center, she was able to rely on her small town roots of “making a way out of no way” by merging academics and student affairs. 

“Back when I did this, it wasn’t common to bridge the academic and the student affairs side. I did that because the money was on the student affairs side. So, if we wanted anything or needed to do anything, my students could actually apply for and receive more grants or funding than I could on my academic side. So we would always combine those activities of having what is historic in Black studies, not only theory, but in application and connections to the community.”

Now that the Center for Africana Studies had a physical space and funding, Dr. Gillis took a proactive approach by creating jobs. She employed students, one of which is currently a business owner. To this day, this student collaborates with Dr. Gillis’ in a number of her business ventures. 

For many years, the Center was an organization on the move, and by 2016, the Center for Africana studies began to shift into studying abroad. Dr. Gillis has had several students participate in study tours in rural Jamaica. “We go to the farming and fishing community of St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, which is the bread basket. We don’t go to the resorts and my students love it. So far, we’ve completed 7 tours to South Coast Jamaica.  COVID has kept us away, but we hope to return in 2023 for the Calabash International Literary Festival.”

A remarkable opportunity she’s been able to give her students at the Center was the experience of restoring and breathing new life into the once segregated Blind Boone Park. The park, once an African American hub for recreation for the Warrensburg community, was named after legendary ragtime music pioneer John William Boone.  

“I joined local resident Sandy Irle in those efforts and wrote activities in my curriculum in the American and African American history courses where students worked on the park in different ways such as planting a garden, building the gazebo, and making the park handicap accessible. After about 8 years, the park was renovated and put back into the  Warrensburg Park System. From about 2002 to 2010, if a student had me, they would say something about doing something in Blind Boone Park.” 

Dr. Gillis has a lifetime of memories of her work at the Center, but one of her fondest is when she was teaching approximately 170 students in an auditorium and she announced a bonfire activity. Little did these students know that they would walk away with a cherished moment in the history of their own lives.

“About 20 students were like, ‘Okay, sure. I’ll come to the bonfire, eat, drink cocoa, and make s'mores. This is gonna be easy.’ Those ended up being the students that cleared brush at the park. But in that particular event, at the bonfire, they got to talk to elders from the community and they were completely blown away. They actually met residents who went to segregated schools, and they were able to write that in their history papers.

The ultimate question came when I asked Dr. Gillis whether her work as an African history professor attracts white students. She informed me that throughout her teaching career she’s been fortunate that 80 to 90 percent of her white students are receptive to the subject. 

“Their comments and discussions will be ‘no one ever told me this.’ They also feel a sense of being cheated. They also feel like, “You didn’t have to do all of that to make me feel better than I really am.” 

Meanwhile, the remaining 10 to 20 percent of students struggle as they come to terms with who they are. “If their identity is tied to whiteness, they do struggle because that’s forcing them to deal with who they are because they don’t know or understand that their identity is based on whiteness by dehumanizing blackness.” 

Dr. Gillis continues, “UCM has been the largest producer of teachers in our state. Generally, I teach a lot of teachers. I have found it to be a really rewarding experience because I come from the position of, I know what I know. What is it that you know? It’s really about you. It’s really about what is it that you know, what do you think you know, and what would you like to know? 

Over that time, it’s a journey of exploration for them to understand the humanity of a community that may or may not be very connected to them and to see the world through different eyes and to process as they see fit.” 

Thriving in Tulsa and Developing the Greenwood to Ghana Expedition

Today, Dr. Gillis spends her time commuting between the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, Missouri, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Ghana. In 2020, she moved to Tulsa during the weekend of the 99th anniversary of the race massacre. She was able to share the experience with her students back at UCM.  

“It stands out in my mind because of the protest parade. Part of me was like, ‘Yes, we’re protesting!’ The other part of me was like, ‘Wow, we’re still having to protest.’ It was a bittersweet feeling.

It made for a teaching moment in Fall 2020 when I was teaching a course on the Tulsa race massacre. I was talking about African American Tulsa, Black Wall Street, all of that.

My students had an opportunity to attend an online city meeting around the oversight of the mass graves. For them to bear witness at that point after they learned so much of the background by looking at documents, photographs, and watching oral testimonies, they were very prepared to evaluate that both for historical merits and what it means to us as a society today. 

I believe Tulsa really has an opportunity to get this right. It’s not about what happened before, the question is what we’re gonna do with it now. There’s never been, in recent times, a case that just puts it together so well where you cannot deny the reality of what has happened and the impact of that. We have receipts this time. And that’s major.”

What Dr. Gillis loves most about Tulsa is the unique nature of the local mom and pop businesses. She believes supporting them helps push forward the African-American agenda, and she’s blessed to be a part of that movement in society right now.

Outside of being a student of history and teaching history, Dr. Gillis is a powerful business woman. She was welcomed by the Tulsa community with open arms. She enjoys traveling, shopping, and gift giving and one of her companies allows her to blend all three with her signature boutique, She Shops Global, a concierge shopping service where people can shop for “unique, timeless and culturally innovative pieces from the African Diaspora.” 

Another business of hers is Greenwood to Ghana. This is a tour that’s a part of Eye Adom Travel N Tour, a travel agency she co-founded with Kwasi Mboada of the University of Ghana, where they offer excursions with a focus on the African Diaspora, including Ghana and Portugal. Eye Adom is also launching its first trip to the Nature Island of Dominica in May, where people are allowed to earn citizenship by investment. Through her Greenwood to Ghana journeys, she’s able to connect everyone to Ghana and other parts of the motherland and beyond, specifically the community of Greenwood, also known as "little Africa."

Dr. Gillis' tours are centered on the local African experience. Join her tour and you'll literally be a local. In fact, our discussion was held virtually while she was on spring break in Ghana. Her face radiated golden rays of sunshine through my computer screen as we flipped through the pages of her life and work in Africa, and how she facilitates tours.  

"Our brand is all about the local experience. While we’re here, we live like a local. If you want to stay at a western chain or franchise, that’s great, that’s just not what our brand is. We launched our first tour this summer and 90 percent of the vendor chain was African.  We want to make sure the money is staying within the community, so we can create job opportunities and give local people the opportunity.

As far as our tours go, we can do anything – student groups, church groups, group tours, adventure, history and culture, and private tours. We'll curate whatever you like to do. We can do history around President Nkurmah and Ghana’s independence, we can do the slave castles. We also focus on nature and ecotourism, pristine beaches, the river falls and just the overall beauty of this nation. We sit down and curate your bucket list experience.”

Although she had prior experience teaching in Africa, when she went to Ghana in 2019 for the Missouri Africa Program she knew that this was a path that she wanted to pursue. She saw her time in Ghana as a diplomatic trip. She absolutely adored Ghana. She had the pleasure of teaching men and women with "bright young minds," she says, at the University of Ghana, which has over 40,000 students.

“I had such an amazing, life-changing experience in Ghana.  The opportunities that exist for our students and our community are tremendous. The African continent is a young continent. That’s why we want to protect the synergy of that and make sure that young people can meet in both places, physically or through tech projects.”

COVID-19 has had a negative impact on many travel opportunities, and Dr. Gillis’ program is no different. “The pandemic dissipated my program and caused budget cuts. It’s been difficult because our community has been the hardest hit.  Losing cherished faculty in our discipline and our first program graduate and scholarship founder to COVID-19 has been surreal.” In the meantime, the meticulous Dr. Gillis is planting seeds along the way in preparation for the air to clear.

Travel: A Wealth-Building Vehicle for the Black Community

If you ask Dr. Gillis, she’ll tell you that Ghana is the place to be, just like Tulsa. She also hints on how travel can be used as a vehicle of exposure and wealth for the Black community. 

“Tulsa is the place to be right now because of the support given to entrepreneurs and the building of the community that is purposeful. 

I’ve worked with leaders who have never flown, they’ve never been on an airplane, and they didn’t have a passport. In my mind, I'm thinking, ‘If you had that kind of job and your boss said, ‘I need you on a flight tomorrow,’ what would you do? It’s all about exposure and trying to bridge the equity gap. It’s not that our kids aren’t smart or capable but they don't necessarily have the same exposures and opportunities and I think those things can really be a gamechanger.”

Dr. Gillis explained that many of her students go to UCM to merely get a degree. By the time they leave, they walk away with a degree, have become international travelers, been admitted into graduate schools, including ivy league schools, and unlocked the door to a world they could have never imagined. To her, it’s all because someone took them under their wing. “This is possible because of myself or others who took the time to see the light in them and help to guide them.”

Dr. Gillis Talks Preserving Black History and Women’s History

Dr. Gillis’ dedication to our community and the phenomenal legacy she’s leaving for the next generation of historians is important to preserving Black history. 

As a boss woman, Dr. Gillis excels in showing her students that there’s more than one way to achieve a desired result. “Everything I’ve done in Africana Studies has been entrepreneurial. I’m just teaching and modeling transferable skills. That’s a thing with my young folks. They feel like they have to study accounting and be an accountant. I’m like, ‘No, you can do many things in life.’”

When it comes to history, Dr. Gillis is well aware of the tragedies in our community, but she leads with her Sankofa way to inspire her students near and far. “I’m constantly asking them, “But what would Harriet Tubman do?” And they’ll frown and say, “Oh, Dr. Gillis!” But I’m like, you come from that. So hearken into that, the tragedy and the triumph. I do not deny the tragedy, I teach that. But it’s about the triumph – it’s what we did with that that made us extra special, and that’s the space that I work from.”

Dr. Gillis believes that Black history and women’s history demands to be preserved “because our past and ancestors demand it.”  At this point, we must do what we can to keep up with the demand and supply the preservation. 

“We come from a great civilization. What we have given to this world, as a people that are now called Black or African American, or African Diaspora, deserves to be preserved. It’s what you can be inspired by regardless of who you are and what you look like.

Women are the backbone of African society, the backbone of our market and our community. That doesn’t take anything away from our wonderful, handsome, amazing, Black men. It’s just what our role has been.” 

As a supplier to the demand for preservation of Black history, Dr. Gillis is currently teaching her Black women’s courses at UCM.  They focus on Mary McCloud Bethune, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and women from the Tulsa race massacre as well as writers and thinkers including Bell Hooks and Kimberle Crenshaw, just to name a few. 

Surprisingly, the class stems from one of her white students noting in one of her discussions the fact Black women are pivotal, but invisible. Since the early 90s, Dr. Gillis has been asking students to write down three powerful Black women that they know. She explains, “People like Oprah, Toni Morrison, Serena and Beyonce always make the list.” 

Dr. Gillis points out that they know Black women from the media, but the question remains, “Do you really know Black women? With the historic Kamala Harris as Vice President and also possibly the supreme court, you have to ask yourself, well, ‘why did this take so long?’

Committing to ourselves as a culture and examining our historical footprints past and present is a message that everyone can value. Dr. Gillis doesn’t want the impact on our future to get lost. 

“Small towns in the south are where our roots are. Charles Blow talks about the reverse migration. I say, let’s look around. Let's look outside of Chicago or Atlanta. Where else can we go to get the resources we need to have the impact to have vibrant communities? It could be Tulsa, Ghana, Senegal, Dominica. Let’s look at our past and our culture and see what we can do with that moving forward and be open. Take the spirit of our ancestors and elders, and move the needle forward.”