Biography:

Dr. Silva Banks is a native of Massachusetts. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts, Boston where she majored in history and Africana Studies. She received the David Walker Prize for Excellence in African Studies upon graduation. After receiving her degree, Dr. Silva Banks worked in retail and banking before returning to school to pursue her graduate education at the University of South Carolina in American History, with a research focus is on African Americans, women, and labor. She earned numerous dissertation research fellowships including Southern Research Fellowship with the Institute for Southern Studies and the Archie K. Davis Fellowship from the North Caroliniana Society. Her dissertation, “Six Days Thou Shalt Labor: African Americans in the Southern Textile Industry, 1895-1929” was completed in May of 2010. 

While at the University of South Carolina, Dr. Silva Banks served as teaching assistant for the United States survey course.  Additionally, from 2008-2010, she served as the instructor the Research & Methods course, “Historians Craft.” During her graduate study, Silva Banks also worked as the administrative assistant to the NEH Summer Institute, “African-American History as Public History,” directed by Constance Schulz and Robert Weyeneth, and the Institute for African American Research, under Dan Littlefield. Her teaching earned her a nomination for the 2010 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award for the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Additional to her teaching experience, Prof. Silva Banks has worked on numerous projects including as the Associate Producer and Lead Research Researcher on the documentary film, “The Commander: Harriet Tubman and the Combahee Raid” produced by The National Picture Company. She also worked as a researcher and footnote editor for the manuscript collection, “Heyward Family Papers, 1865-1872,” South Caroliniana Library Columbia, South Carolina.  

Current Research and Professional Activities:

Dr. Silva Banks teaches the following courses:

American Experience I

Civilizations & Ideas I

Civilizations & Ideas II

Meanings of America, Honors

Making of Modern America

Research & Methods

Dr. Silva Banks recently completed two encyclopedia articles for the Oxford University Press,  “Gertrude Hood Miller” and “Thomas Wellington Thurston,” in African American National Biography, Online Edition, Editors in Chief, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham.

She is also working on an article “’When the Boss Gets You Told’: African Americans and the Problem of Labor in North Carolina Textile Mills.”

Silva Banks also serves on the Executive Board of the Southern Labor Studies Association and contributes to the association’s newsletter.

Kathryn Silva Banks currently resides in St. Joseph and Boston, Massachusetts. She is married to Raymond A. Banks of Boston, Massachusetts. They are members of the Berea Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Boston, Massachusetts.