Get to Know Walter
Dr. Walter Greason, Ph.D., is the founding scholar and historian of Afrofuturist Design. Named one of “Today’s Black History Makers” by The Philadelphia Daily News, Dr. Greason has written more than one hundred academic articles and essays. ​He is an author, editor, and contributor to more than twenty books, mostly notably the award-winning books Suburban Erasure, Illmatic Consequences, The Black Reparations Project, and The Graphic History of Hip Hop. His work on the Timothy Thomas Fortune Cultural Center has garnered international acclaim for the innovative use of digital technology, leading to multiple urban revitalization projects in Minnesota, Florida, New Jersey, and Louisiana. He appeared on dozens of mass media outlets in the United States and around the world.
​​
He was a Future Faculty Fellow at Temple University where he completed his Ph.D. in History and contributed to President William J. Clinton's National Dialogue on Race. As a Presidential Scholar at Villanova University where he studied History, English, Philosophy, Peace and Justice Studies, and Africana Studies, he organized a social justice campaign that established the first Strategic Plan for Cultural Diversity in American history. The principles of the plan were adopted by the Board of Trustees in 2006 and led to a massive capital expansion of the university, culminating in the Vatican's election of Pope Leo XIV in 2025.
​
His most recent project, The Graphic History of Hip Hop, with Afrofuturist illustrator Tim Fielder, has been featured at the United Nations, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum for African American History and Culture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Schomburg Center in the New York Public Library system, and San Diego Comic-Con in 2024.
​
He is the Wallace Endowed Chair of History in the Department of History at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and holds research affiliate positions with Brandeis University’s Institute for Economic and Racial Equity, Rutgers University’s Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, the Center for New American History at the University of Richmond, and the University of Minnesota’s College of Design.
​​
​Bibliography:
The Land Speaks
Encyclopedia of Black Comics
Cities Imagined
Industrial Segregation
Planning Future Cities
The American Economy
Suburban Erasure
The Path to Freedom