George and Ann RichardsCivil War Era Center

Biography:

Keon Burns is a dual-title Ph.D. student in History and African American Studies. He is a 2025 Mellon Just Transformation fellow and a 2024 Medgar and Myrlie Evers fellow. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Accountancy and a Master’s degree in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi.  His research areas include Business History, the early twentieth-century United States, and the African American experience. His dissertation focuses on the pivotal role of Black-owned grocery stores throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  He is currently working on a  dissertation chapter entitled, “Black Intellectuals & Black Grocers during the Golden Age and High Noon of Jim Crow to the end of the Great Depression, 1895-1941.