Profile

Melissa Charles (she, her) is an educator-organizer and teaching artist who writes across various genres. She has organized (and organizes) alongside various Pan-Afrikan spaces/projects ranging from anarchism to nationalism, bringing a lens of queer-socialist-feminism. Melissa is a longtime lecturer in Black and Ethnic studies where she has taught at UC-Berkeley, Cal State and Cuesta College. She is a co-founder and the Minister of Education at Malcolm X Academy for Afrikan Education (@916mxa) where she both develops and coordinates an afro-indigenous centered curriculum for the TK-8th grade community school. As a scholar, her interests lie in the analysis of r/evolutionary movements for social change with particular emphases on 1) the political education projects of these movements and 2) the roles and experiences of gendered minorities and children in understanding self-determination.