Awards

Bicentennial Medal - 2021

About Elizabeth Gritter

Elizabeth Gritter is an assistant professor of history at IU Southeast who specializes in U.S. history since 1865 with a focus on the black freedom struggle. She also directs IU Southeast’s Institute for Local and Oral History. She has been serving as the campus historian for IUS and participated in the planning of Indiana University’s bicentennial in 2020. Before starting her current position at Indiana University Southeast, Gritter served as visiting assistant professor of U.S. history at Middle Tennessee State University in Tennessee. She received her training in oral history as a research assistant for the prestigious Southern Oral History Program of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She went on to work as a research associate for the congressionally mandated civil rights history project, which was carried out by the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, and American Folklore Society. She was one of four researchers charged with conducting a nationwide survey of archival collections containing oral histories and interviews related to the civil rights movement.

Gritter has reviewed books for the Journal of American History, Journal of Southern History, and the Southern Association for Women Historians. She has presented her research at a number of conferences, including ones in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; New York, New York; Baltimore, Maryland; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Nashville, Tennessee. In addition, she was invited to speak at the Little Rock School Desegregation Crisis 50th Anniversary International Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Gritter has won numerous grants in support of her research. She received the prestigious Kennedy Research Grant from the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, and was awarded the nationally competitive Harry S. Truman Scholarship in 2000. Gritter is a member of the American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, Southern Historical Association, Southern Association for Women Historians, and Oral History Association. In 2021, Gritter was awarded Indiana University’s Bicentennial Medal, in recognition of her distinguished contributions and service to education and the university.