Sarah Ducksworth

Sarah Ducksworth is a researcher and writer. She finds stories of courage about ordinary people compelling.

Dr. Ducksworth is a former English professor who now writes for pleasure and introspection although she enjoys sharing her work. As a longtime educator, she has touched many lives. These days, she often reflects upon students who may have entered her classroom with the firm belief that they were poor writers, but left, at the end of a term, seeing themselves able to write their feelings down on paper and thinking of themselves as good essayists.

In the twilight of Dr.Ducksworth’s long productive life, she often feels that she took the road less traveled by but, along the way, she was able to share the mite God gave her with others to make a positive difference in the lives of many others who entered her path. Her selection to Tougaloo College’s Hall of Fame this year (2026) she regards as the crown jewel of her life.

In 1989, Dr. Sarah Ducksworth read the autobiography of Ida B. Wells-Barnett and was so impressed by Ida’s story that, in the summer of 1990, she began researching the forgotten exploits of the heroine who claimed to have led an anti-lynching crusade that changed the outlook of the nation and of the world on injustice and oppression. Sarah spent two decades gathering primary supportive materials to prove Wells’ claims from old newspapers and magazines scattered over numerous states and abroad. 

Sarah’s work was recognized by other scholars in the field when she began presenting her findings in various venues and lecturing on the life and times of Ida B Wells-Barnett to audiences at the University where she worked, in community centers, and in local club gatherings during Black history month.

Plexus Press of NJ discovered Sarah’s work on the historic figure as well as her work on the Underground  Railroad and an agent for the publisher asked her to write the foreword to the 5th edition of William Still’s classic, The Underground Railroad; when the company was in the midst of republishing the book. The reprint of William Still’s book was completed in 2005 with a foreword written by Dr. Sarah Smith Ducksworth.

The Center for Anti Slavery Studies later hired Sarah to follow the tracks of runaways through ten counties of eastern Pennsylvania and to create a volume of period research for their archives. Scholars like Miriam DeCosta Willis who published Wells’ Memphis Diary asked Dr. Ducksworth to share some of the Wells articles for the book.She agreed and DeCosta Willis included several of Wells’ stories Sarah had recovered in the diary. Decosta Willis acknowledged Sarah’s generosity in the front matter of the published diary.

Finally, PBS reached out to Dr. Ducksworth and asked her to be an expert commentator on a Black History Month documentary based on the William Still story. The documentary was released in 2011.

In 1995, Dr. Ducksworth  participated in a NEH summer workshop, and wrote an essay on the way white identity defines blackness in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. The essay was included in a book entitled Rhetoric in Uncle Tom's Cabin and published by Massachusetts University Press. This book is still considered an important reference for examining from both a historical and a literary perspective  Stowe's seminal story on slavery. Dr. Ducksworth’s essay in the book has been compared to an essay written by James Baldwin. Her essay has been cited in many college term papers and in scholarly papers and essays written on Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Recognition for Sarah’s academic achievements date back to her high school days when she wrote a byline for a state mainstream newspaper highlighting activities on the campus of her segregated high school named Lanier Junior Senior High School. Sarah graduated from high school with straight A’s and was chosen to be the commencement speaker for the class of 1961.

Academic success followed Dr. Ducksworth in college. In her junior year she was chosen to be an exchange student in a prestigious cultural and academic program between her college, Tougaloo College, and Oberlin College. In her senior year she was chosen as the student leader representative to attend a summit at the White House which President Lyndon B. Johnson hosted. She was the valedictorian and commencement speaker for her college class of 1965.

Upon completing the program for a doctorate degree in English Education and graduating summa cum laude, her dissertation  was chosen to be one of two coveted excellence in dissertation awards given by the School of English education alumni Association at Rutgers University.

While teaching at Kean University during her thirty-year tenure, Dr. Ducksworth received numerous awards and local grants. Here are a few: the Laurie Chair Women’s Studies Fellowship award at Douglass College in 1990 (an international competition); a Woodrow Wilson Summer Writer’s Fellowship held on Princeton University campus; selection for two summer residences in creative writing at Yale University; selection to participate in a celebration of expatriate writers who lived in  Paris during the early twentieth century and the opportunity to be one of the scholars making presentations at the Sorbonne University; twice chosen to be a resident scholar in the Paul Robeson fellowship program in New Brunswick sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Dr. Ducksworth’s entry into the field of creative writing was purely accidental. It began with her Ida B. Wells' research and was followed by various works of fiction and poetry, all of which are now unpublished and are being distributed without her authorization. Her authorized published works are still included in encyclopedias and in collaborative books and a few appear as single entries in the New York Times, in a literary magazine called Sage, and in a magazine titled Black Issues in Higher Education.

Her dream for the future is to have all of her completed or nearly completed works (four volumes devoted to the life and times of Ida B. wells, four novels, and two books of poetry) published.

Dr. Ducksworth lives in New Jersey with her husband of 61 years. She had two children but lost her son in 2018. Her daughter, Sheila, lives in California and is a television producer. Dr. Ducksworth sees her life as the glass half full and is determined to live her best life. Each day she thinks of her many blessings and feels grateful.