Ventura County's 40th Annual

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAY

A Living Legacy: Cultivating Compassion and
Justice in Ventura County

Dr. Gaye Theresa Johnson
Director of the Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy (UCSB)

Gaye Theresa Johnson is a historian of freedom struggles and cultural politics, and a facilitator and trainer in healing justice for movement collectives across the nation.

A professor at UC Santa Barbara from 2005-2015, she then spent ten years in the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at UCLA and as Associate Director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. In July 2025, she returned to UCSB, where she is now Director of the Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy and a professor of Black Studies and Chicana/o Studies.

She is the author of three acclaimed books: Futures of Black Radicalism (published with Verso Press); Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity (with University of California Press); and just out in December 2025, Rings of Dissent: Boxing and Performances of Rebellion, which was co-edited with sports scholars Rodolfo Mondragón and David J. Leonard (University of Illinois Press).

Professor Johnson teaches Black history, Chicana/o cultural expression, and histories of social movements in the U.S. She has been a fellow at the Stanford Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa, and has received numerous awards for her research and teaching.

Johnson is a community-engaged scholar and an advocate for grassroots organizing, primarily in reproductive justice, farmworkers’ rights, and housing justice. Her proudest achievement is being a mother, a daughter, and a part of the circle of friends and family that constitute the core of her life.