Denise Lynn

Denise Lynn

Contributor

Denise Lynn is Associate Professor of History and Director of Gender Studies at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, Indiana. She serves as the Vice-President of the Historians of American Communism. She writes a regular blog for Black Perspectives, a publication of the African American Intellectual History Society. Her research focuses on gender and race in the American Communist Party.

Adventures in the Archives

FBI Files and Historical Practice

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My undergraduates are always horrified to learn that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) once tried to convince Martin Luther King Jr. to kill himself or else it would release damning evidence of his extramarital affairs. The FBI’s letter to King is exemplary of the contentious relationship between the Bureau and social justice activists and… Read more →

Killing Clio

The Disappearance of Juliet Stuart Poyntz

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Throughout the spring and early summer of 1937, telephone operators at the American Woman’s Association Clubhouse in Manhattan noted that a man with a deep voice called daily for one of the residents, Juliet Stuart Poyntz. Poyntz took the calls every time, until one morning in June when she spoke with her mysterious caller and… Read more →