Reception for Dr. Blair LM Kelley & Dedication of Raymond Gavins Commons

The Department of History invites you to the dedication of Raymond Gavins Commons in Classroom Building (room 224). Previously known to many as "the Fishbowl," this newly refurbished space will now serve as a multi-function meeting and study space, and as a loving tribute to the powerful and lasting legacy of Dr. Raymond Gavins (1942-2016), the first African American to join the faculty of Duke University’s history department, where he remained for 45 years. We're pleased to formally inaugurate the room with a reception in honor of one of Dr. Gavins' most distinguished former students, Dr. Blair LM Kelley.

In June of 2025, Blair Kelley was named President and Director of the National Humanities Center. A nationally recognized public historian in her own right, Dr. Kelley’s work amplifies the histories of Black people, chronicling the everyday impact of their activism. Before joining the NHC, she served as the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and directed the Center for the Study of the American South. Also elected recently as a fellow of the Society of American Historians, Dr. Kelley is the first woman and the first person of color to lead the National Humanities Center in its 47-year history.

Dr. Kelley received her BA from the University of Virginia in history and African and African American studies. She earned her MA and PhD in history, and graduate certificates in African and African American studies and women’s studies at Duke University. The doctoral advisor for her 2003 dissertation, "A Right to Ride": African American Citizenship, Identity, and the Protest over Jim Crow Transportation," was Raymond Gavins.

In addition to his exceptional and widely regarded scholarship on African American history, Raymond Gavins played an important role in Duke’s oral history program, the Center for the Study of Civil Rights and Race Relations, and the Center for Documentary Studies’ Behind the Veil Project, an audio trove of 1,350 oral-history interviews with African Americans from across the South who remembered the days of Jim Crow.

While he broke many racial barriers as both educator and scholar, Raymond Gavins' influence was by no means symbolic, and is probably best measured by the many generations of students and faculty that he mentored and inspired throughout his years at Duke, and beyond, like Professor Kelly who we are honored to welcome back to the History department.

We invite you to join us for this very special evening honoring two exceptional individuals whose scholarship and public engagement go well beyond points-of-pride to serve as testaments to the ongoing mission and greatest aspirations of the Department of History at Duke University.