Russell John Rickford (born c. 1975[1]) is an American scholar and activist who is an associate professor in the History Department at Cornell University.
[1] His mother, Angela E. Rickford, is a professor of Special Education at San Jose State University[3] and the author of I Can Fly: Teaching Narratives and Reading Comprehension to African Americans and other Ethnic Minority Students.
[10] The term "Spoken Soul" was coined by author Claude Brown in the 1960s and pays homage to the rhythmic, poetic qualities of African-American English.
[11] In 2001,[8] Rickford left his job in Philadelphia and moved into his parents' garage to write the first, and to date only, in-depth biography of Betty Shabazz.
[8] Writing in The Crisis, William Jelani Cobb called Rickford's work "a thorough, insightful and engaging book, befitting its enigmatic—and ultimately heroic—subject".
[14] Marable credited Rickford with coining the term "Malcolmology" to describe the way in which African Americans rediscovered Malcolm X as a cultural icon after he was embraced by major hip-hop artists of the 1980s and 1990s.
[20][19][23][22] On October 18, The Cornell Daily Sun published a letter of apology for his "horrible choice of words" in a speech he claimed was intended "to stress grassroots African American, Jewish and Palestinian traditions of resistance to oppression.