Quincy T. Mills

Photo of Quincy T. Mills

Assistant Professor of History

Office:  Swift Hall, room 36

Phone:  437-5673

Hours:  Leave of absence, a and b semesters

Contact Quincy T. Mills

Quincy T. Mills joined the Vassar faculty in 2006 as Assistant Professor of History.  He earned his B.S from the University of Illinois at Urbana (1997), his M.B.A. from DePaul University (2004), and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (2006).  His research focuses on African American urban and business history, race and segregation, and social and political movements.  He recently completed his dissertation “‘Color-Line’ Barbers and the Emergence of a Black Public Space: A Social and Political History of Black Barbers and Barber Shops, 1850-1970.”  His course offerings include History 160 (Readings in U.S. History), History 265 (African American History to 1865), History 267 (African American History since 1865), and History 365 (Race and the History of Jim Crow Segregation).  He is also actively involved in the Africana Studies Program.   

Mr. Mills recently published an essay on black barber shop patrons’ discourse on homeland security; “I've Got Something to Say”: The Public Square, Public Discourse and the Barbershop,” Radical History Review, Fall 2005. With Melissa Harris-Lacewell, he coauthored “Truth and Soul: Black Talk in the Barbershop” in Harris-Lacewell's Barbershops, Bibles and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton, 2004). He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of New York State (Syracuse, 2005) and the Encyclopedia of African American Business History (Greenwood, 1999).  Mr. Mills was also featured at the end of Showtime Network's airing of the movie Barbershop in 2004 where he discussed the historical development of black barbershops at the turn of the twentieth century.