Mary Barr

Mary Barr teaches at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. She received her Ph.D. in African American Studies and Sociology from Yale University. In 2020 Barr was one of three Kentuckians to receive a book grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She used the award to research and write her second book. The project examines the history of residential segregation and the struggle for open housing in suburbs north of Chicago from 1959-1968. Research grants from the Congregational Library in Boston, and libraries at the Universities of Wisconsin and Virginia have supported this research. Her first book Friends Disappear: The Battle for Racial Equality in Evanston was published in 2014 by the University of Chicago Press.