Mahmoud El-Kati
Biography of Mahmoud El-Kati
Mahmoud El‑Kati is a lecturer, writer, and commentator on the African American experience. He specializes in African American history and advocates institution building within cultural communities. He is an advocate of building one’s humanity through the understanding of their culture, history and community. He currently lives in the Rondo neighborhood, St. Paul’s historic Black community.
El‑Kati was a professor of history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Macalester College has established the Mahmoud El‑Kati Distinguished Lectureship in American Studies in recognition of his scholarly and community work. This endowment is used to bring distinguished scholars to Macalester for an extended engagement that includes public presentations, classroom appearances and conversations with students, faculty and the local community.
El‑Kati as a writer has written articles, essays, and reviews that deal with a variety of issues including the myth of “race,” Ebonics, gangs and Black youth, education, African Americans, sports, and other issues. They have appeared in several newspapers and publications including the New York Times, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Insight News, The MN Spokesman‑Recorder, and The Nigerian Times. As a published author he has written such books as Politically Considered: 50th Commemoration of the Supreme Court Decision of 1954, Hiptionary: A Survey of African American Speech Patterns With Critical Commentary and A Digest of Key Words and Phrases and lately Haiti: The Hidden Truth.
He is a frequent commentator through a variety of mass media outlets locally and nationally. He is a regular columnist for Insight News, a Twin Cities newspaper. He is a consistent commentator for the local radio stations KFAI and KMOJ.
El‑Kati teaches courses on the history of Blacks in the United States, American Social Movements, Sports and the African‑American Community, the Social History of Jazz and African‑American Folklore. He also teaches the African‑American Experience class at North High School in Minneapolis. In addition, El‑Kati teaches classes across the community and conducts workshops for educators in the Midwest region.
He is a co‑founder of the annual Pan‑African Conference at Minnesota State University, which over the last 27 years has featured discussions on African thought throughout the Diaspora. He is a former board member of KMOJ radio, a community‑run station, nationally.
El‑Kati is a founding member of the following institutions and organizations: The African and African‑American Studies Department at the University of Minnesota; the Community Investment Fund and the Pan African Community Endowment (both are grant‑making conduits to grassroots community projects); Stairstep Foundation, a philanthropic and economic development institution for community empowerment; New Century I Cooperative Lending Fund, designed to create financial assets to make loans accessible to members of the community; and CommUniversity, a self‑help education program that brings academic lectures to the community.
El‑Kati is actively involved in community organizations such as MARCH (Men Are Responsible for Cultivating Hope), a result of the Million Man March and the Minneapolis‑based Stairstep Foundation. He is a recipient of the National Association of Black Storytellers’ Zora Neale Hurston Award, given to people whose scholarly historical writings preserve the culture and tradition of Africans and African Americans in America. He also received the Sankofa Award from the Stairstep Foundation for his longtime and unwavering commitment to and work with the Twin Cities’ African American community. El‑Kati is a guiding elder for several African‑centered charter schools and independent Black schools such as the African‑American Academy for Accelerated Learning and the Imhotep Science Academy.
El‑Kati was a U.S. representative to the 1999 PANAFest Conference held in Accra, Ghana, West Africa. PANAFest is an international bi‑annual gathering of scholars, cultural workers, and artists, where he presented a paper at the symposium on Africans in the Diaspora.
El‑Kati is a graduate of Wilberforce University in Ohio.
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