Michael Eric Dyson: Education and Career
Michael Eric Dyson, born on October 23, 1958, in Detroit, Michigan, is an American academic, author, Baptist minister, radio host, and public intellectual. He is currently a professor in the College of Arts and Science and in the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University. Described by Michael A. Fletcher as "a Princeton Ph.D.," Dyson's career path is marked by both academic rigor and public engagement.
Early Life and Education
Dyson's early life was rooted in Detroit, where he was the son of Addie Mae Leonard and, after 1960, her husband Everett Dyson. His father was an autoworker, and his mother was a paraprofessional in the city schools. Dyson attended Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, on an academic scholarship. However, he later returned to public high school and graduated from Northwestern High School in 1976. Dyson was an active youngster, attending boarding school at 16. It wasn't long before he began to feel uncomfortable around his classmates, who treated him as an outcast, often wrecking his dorm room and personal items and calling him racist names.
Following high school, Dyson became a teenage father-to-be living on welfare. These responsibilities led him to accept maintenance and auto sales jobs. He also hustled and was a gang member, and it seemed that this existence would be his life. Yet Dyson stayed with his Baptist church and slowly began to rediscover his love of oratory. He became an ordained Baptist minister at nineteen years of age. He entered Knoxville College as a freshman at the age of twenty-one. Dyson received his bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from Carson-Newman College in 1985. He earned his Ph.D. in 1993.
Academic Career
After doing his undergraduate work, Dyson worked as a freelance journalist. This helped him raise money to help his younger brother, who had been imprisoned in the early 1980s for second-degree murder. He worked for numerous magazines and newspapers, writing on Black popular culture and music. He also taught at Princeton, Hartford Seminary, and Chicago Theological Seminary. His other academic credits include Brown University, Providence, RI, assistant professor, 1993-95; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1995-97; Columbia University, visiting distinguished professor, 1997-99; DePaul University, Chicago; Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor.
Dyson has taught at some of the nation’s most distinguished universities, including Brown, UNC Chapel Hill, Columbia, DePaul, the University of Pennsylvania, and Georgetown University. He is presently Distinguished University Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies, College of Arts & Science, and Distinguished University Professor of Ethics and Society, The Divinity School, and NEH Centennial Chair at Vanderbilt University.
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Writing Career
Dyson is one of America’s premier public intellectuals and author of over 25 books, including seven New York Times bestsellers. His writing, known for its depth, covers various topics. Through his writing, Dyson challenges readers to think deeply about important issues and to consider new perspectives. His 1994 book Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X became a New York Times notable book of the year. In his 2006 book Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster, Dyson analyzes the political and social events in the wake of the catastrophe against the backdrop of an overall "failure in race and class relations". In 2010, Dyson edited Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic, with contributions based on the album's tracks by, among others, Kevin Coval, Kyra D. Gaunt, and Sohail Daulatzai.
Dyson’s esteemed literary output won him the 2020 Langston Hughes Medal, which in the past was awarded to James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and August Wilson. Dyson has also won an American Book Award, a Southern Book Award, and two NAACP Image Awards. Dyson has written bestselling volumes on Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, 2Pac, Marvin Gaye, Bill Cosby, and Barack Obama. Among his notable publications are Reflecting Black: African American Cultural Criticism, his pioneering book of Black cultural studies, I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr., his first book on the civil rights icon that probed his radical dimensions, Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur, which, according to Publisher’s Weekly helped to prove that hip hop books are commercially viable, and Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? which helped to renew a conversation on class in Black America. Dyson’s book on Cosby, and his popular volume, Why I Love Black Women, both won prestigious NAACP Image Awards for nonfiction.
Dyson’s New York Times bestselling The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America has been described by the New York Times as “an interpretive miracle” and was a finalist for the prestigious 2016 Kirkus Prize. His New York Times bestselling Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America was called by the New York Times “one of the most frank and searing discussions on race…a deeply serious, urgent book, which should take its place in the tradition of Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and King’s Why We Can’t Wait.” The book won the 2018 Southern Book Prize. Dyson’s Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster won the American Book Award.
Dyson’s New York Times bestseller What Truth Sounds Like: RFK, James Baldwin and Our Unfinished Conversation on Race in America has been called by Kirkus Review “an incisive look at the role of politicians, artists, intellectuals, and activists in confronting racial injustice and effecting change,” and an “eloquent response to an urgent - and still-unresolved - dilemma.” The book was named by the Washington Post as one of the “50 notable works of nonfiction in 2018.” Dyson’s book, JAY-Z: Made in America, was also a New York Times bestseller. The Washington Post, (which named the book one of the 50 notable works of nonfiction in 2019), said that the “eminent cultural critic delivers a fleshed-out portrait of one of the country’s biggest rappers - and one of its biggest self-made men,” and that Dyson “writes with the affection of a fan but the rigor of an academic.” The book won Dyson an African American Literary Award as “Author of the Year.” In December 2020, published Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America, which Robin DiAngelo calls a “searing cry for racial justice from one of our nation’s greatest thinkers and most compelling prophets.” Kirkus Review says it is a “sweeping overview of racism in America” and a “timely, fervent message from an important voice,” while Publishers Weekly says that it is “[r]ich with feeling and insight, this elegiac account hits home.”
Dyson’s book Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America was published in November 2021. Kirkus Review says, “Dyson writes with a broad, well-learned view of Black history” in what it concludes is a “thoughtful, elegantly argued contribution to the literature of Black lives in America.” Publisher’s Weekly says that “Dyson maintains a firm grip on the cultural moment and offers razor-sharp insights into American history, politics, and art. This is a feast of insights.” The New York Times says that “Dyson’s work clearly comes from a deep well of love - for his country, for his people and for the intellectual and cultural figures he admires…Known for extemporizing full speeches and sermons without notes, Dyson plays in the space between preacher and poet…There is also a stylistic performance taking place within the pages of the book: that of the public Black intellectual demonstrating that he is erudite yet still hip, referencing philosophers and theorists like Kant, Derrida and Foucault while also name-checking rappers like Nas and Jay-Z….Dyson’s fans may relish…his more signature style, full of the alliteration and anaphora that mark the best of Black oratory and written word.” The book was named an Amazon editor’s pick for best books in November, a Kirkus Review best book of the year, and a Kirkus Review best book on race in 2021.
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Dyson’s book, Unequal: A Story of America, published in May 2022, is a volume for young readers penned with renowned writer and editor Marc Favreau. Publishers Weekly says that this “searing look at attempts to block students ‘from learning the truth of inequality in the United States’ encourages readers to acknowledge the deep-seated presence of structural racism in American. one day lives up to its most ethical professed ideas.” Dyson’s most recent book, Represent: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote, penned again with Marc Favreau, has garnered rave reviews.
Media Career
Dyson hosted a radio show, which aired on Radio One, from January 2006 to February 2007. He is also a commentator on National Public Radio, MSNBC and CNN, and is a regular guest on Real Time with Bill Maher. The Michael Eric Dyson Show radio program debuted on April 6, 2009, and was broadcast from Morgan State University. The show's first guest was Oprah Winfrey, to whom Dyson dedicated his 2009 book Can You Hear Me Now? The Inspiration, Wisdom, and Insight of Michael Eric Dyson. In May 2018, he participated in the Munk debate on political correctness, arguing alongside Michelle Goldberg against Stephen Fry and Jordan Peterson. Dyson has also frequently appeared on CNN and Fox News to offer political and cultural analysis. Dyson has even found time to make guest appearances on scripted cable and network television programs such as Soul Food, The Game and Black-ish.
Dyson has served for the last 30 years as a journalist, media commentator and host, on every major radio and television show, from NPR’s Morning Edition, The Takeaway, and Fresh Air with Terry Gross, to television’s Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Today Show, Good Morning America, and Real Time with Bill Maher. Dyson has served as a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and as a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and a political analyst for MSNBC.
Other Notable Activities
Dyson has been a preacher and pastor for the past 40 years, ordained at Detroit’s Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church. He has given sermons at many notable churches across the country, including the Riverside Church in Manhattan, Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, St. Frederick Sampson - has mounted many of the nation’s most noted pulpits to deliver sermons, from Manhattan’s The Riverside Church to Brooklyn’s Concord Baptist Church of Christ, from Dallas’s Friendship West Baptist Church to Richmond’s St. Paul Baptist Church, from Harlem’s First Corinthian Baptist Church to Memphis’ Christ Missionary Baptist Church, and from Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church to Detroit’s Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, and his present home church, the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. In addition to preaching at traditional churches, Dyson continues to give lectures at universities and public theaters around the world.
Awards and Recognition
Michael Eric Dyson has received numerous awards and accolades throughout his career. These include the 2020 Langston Hughes Medal, an American Book Award for Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster, and two NAACP Image Awards for Why I Love Black Women and Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? Dyson’s New York Times bestselling The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America was a finalist for the prestigious 2016 Kirkus Prize.
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Personal Life
He married his second wife, Marcia Louise, in 1992 and has two children, Michael II and Maisha. Dyson is proudly married to writer and ordained minister Marcia L. Dyson.
General Philosophy
Dyson's general philosophy is that American black people are continuing to suffer from generations of ongoing oppression.
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