Hailed “young sister leader” by Spelman College and Bennett College for Women
President Emerita Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, Dr. Crystal A. deGregory was the recipient
of the 2014 HopeDealer of the Year Award, presented by the Washington, D.C.- based The H.O.P.E. Scholarship Initiative. Just recently, she was a finalist for the 2015 HBCU Awards Alumna of the Year Award, and is a Bishop Michael Eldon School 50th Anniversary Warriors Golden Jubilee honoree.

A native of Freeport, Bahamas, Dr. deGregory attended Mary Star of the Sea School
and is a 1999 graduate of Freeport Anglican High School. She is an alumna of the
historic Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee; she received master’s and doctoral
degrees in history from Vanderbilt University, and holds a Master of Education in
curriculum and instruction from Tennessee State University.

A member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated and co-host of Black Docs
Radio on SiriusXM, Dr. deGregory is the founder and executive editor of HBCUstory,
Inc., an advocacy initiative preserving, presenting and promoting inspiring stories of
the Historically Black College and University’s (HBCU) past and present, for their
future.

Her published work includes contributions to The Journal of Tennessee State
University (2012), Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture (2011) and
Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience
(2009) and she serves as editor of Emancipation and the Fight for Freedom (2013),
the sixth volume in the 12-part series Tennessee in the Civil War: The Best of the
Tennessee Historical Quarterly. She has published chapters in In an Inescapable
Network of Mutuality: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Globalization of an Ethical Ideal
as well as HBCU Experience – The Book: A Collection of Essays Celebrating the Black
College Experience; most recently, she published an editorial “Nashville’s Black
Clandestine Schools,” in the New York Times as a part of its Disunion series
celebrating the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.