Stephen Stacks

Stephen Stacks (he/his) is an assistant professor of music at North Carolina Central University. He earned his Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was awarded a Royster Society Fellowship for his dissertation on civil rights freedom singing in U.S. culture. Before UNC, he received a master’s degree in Choral Conducting from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in Church Music from Furman University. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and two daughters and is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.

Dr. Stacks is the author of "The Resounding Revolution: Freedom Song after 1968," which is set for publication in Spring 2025 from the University of Illinois Press. The book rethinks the contested legacy and continuing importance of the music of the Civil Rights/Black Freedom Movement after 1968. Conventional understandings of freedom song cast it as a circumscribed repertoire, tether it to the classical phase of the Civil Rights Movement (1954–1968) and the philosophy of nonviolence, and downplay its continued significance after 1968. In fact, freedom song — anthems and spirituals such as "We Shall Overcome" and "This Little Light of Mine" that accompanied meetings, protest actions, and marches during the Civil Rights Movement — became a vital, contested music after 1968, a site to challenge the memory of the earlier years of the Movement, and debate the resonance of the Movement in the present. Drawing from ethnography, archival research, music/media analysis, and historiographical interrogation, the book demonstrates that freedom song is not a static repertoire for a social movement that ended fifty years ago, but a living tradition that provides fertile ground for constructing collective memory, crafting political identity, and leveraging capital in contemporary struggles for freedom. 

In addition to the monograph, his scholarship has led to numerous presentations at national and international conferences and several shorter publications. Most notably, he authored a colloquy piece on antiracist pedagogy and an article on Bernice Johnson Reagon’s musical coalition politics, both published in the Journal of the Society for American Music. Dr. Stacks is also in the early stages of a second book project, which will examine American Indian musical collaboration and identity formation. 

As a pedagogue, Dr. Stacks is versatile and is committed to the growth and wellbeing of his students. He has taught a wide variety of courses at both UNC Chapel Hill and North Carolina Central University. He is currently an assistant professor of music at NCCU, where he teaches Ear Training and Sight Singing, Vocal Pedagogy, Voice Class, Diction for Singers, Applied Voice, Survey of Music, and various other (ethno)musicology courses for the Music Department, as well as Arts and Humanities for the Language and Literature Department. 

In addition to his academic work, Dr. Stacks writes speculative fiction and has been a performing church musician for over 15 years. He lives in Apex with his wife and two daughters.