Milton Katz
Senior Professor
Bio
Dr. Milton Katz teaches classes in American history and literature, the Holocaust, and peace and conflict resolution. He is the author of three books, and over two dozen articles, book chapters, essays and reviews on peace and social justice movements in contemporary American history. He has also presented lectures on art of the Holocaust in educational, community, and religious institutions throughout the United States and Europe. Dr. Katz has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Missouri and Kansas Humanities Councils, and the Mellon and Fulbright Foundations. In 1998, he received the Kansas City Art Institute’s Special Project Award, the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2001, and, in 2007, the Distinguished Achievement Award. In 2008, he received the prestigious William Rockhill Nelson Award for Literary Excellence by Missouri and Kansas authors in non-fiction for his book Breaking Through: John B. McLendon, Basketball Legend and Civil Rights Pioneer.
As a social historian, Dr. Katz’s biography of the first African American basketball coach inducted in the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame, sheds a powerful light on how sports have been one of the primary mediums for breaking down racial barriers in American society, and has inspired three documentary films on ESPN, PBS, and most recently in 2021 on CBS. The link to this latest one is below.