Ronald Angelo Johnson - Department of History, Baylor University

About this episode

The episode features a conversation with Ronald Angelo Johnson about his work on the American Revolution and its connections to Black history.

This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods. Today's conversation is with Ronald Angelo Johnson, Ralph and Bessie Mae Lynn Professor of History at Baylor University. His latest book Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution , published in 2025 by Cornell University Press, is a reinterpretation of the American Revolution, which brings to light the fascinating story of American patriots and rebels from Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) allying against European tyranny. Entangled Alliances has received the Texas Institute of Letters Honor Award for Most Significant Scholarly Book and the Phillis Wheatley Book Award. Johnson is currently working on the book We Are All Equal: Turmoil and Triumph in the Early United States and Revolutionary…

People in this episode

Hosts: Ashley Newby, John E. Drabinski

Guest: Ronald Angelo Johnson

Topics covered

• Black Studies
• American Revolution
• diplomatic history
• race and revolution
• cultural inquiry

Keywords

• Black Studies
• American Revolution
• Ronald Angelo Johnson
• diplomatic history
• race
• Haiti
• scholarly book

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Baylor University

Books & works: Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution, We Are All Equal: Turmoil and Triumph in the Early United States and Revolutionary Haiti, Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance

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