At the heart of Dr. Melanye Price’s life and work lies a question she has pondered on since her childhood: how can a city house inequities within the same zip code? Her early encounters with democracy include memories of walking to Sunnyside Park with her mother as a child to watch her vote and getting into the booth to pull the little lever.
Born and raised in Houston’s Sunnyside neighborhood, Price observed the impacts of systemic exclusion, racist geography and disparities in the public education system, but learned the words for them much later in her life. While traveling home in her school bus with students from all walks of life, Price wondered about the differences in their life experiences and their ripple effects.
“From where I lived to Westheimer, it was very unlikely that your parents were gonna come pick you up, you couldn’t do afterschool programs, sports because you had to be on that bus so you could get back home,” Price explained.
Today, Price is an Endowed Professor of Political Science at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) and the director of the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice, which investigates race and justice through oral histories, research and public scholarship. Price explained that her role bridges rigorous academics with the lived experiences of the community that raised her, focusing on Black political behavior, systemic inequality and youth civic participation. Work, for her, is more than academic; it’s personal.
“I want them [communities] to have information that is easily accessible and that’s not full of a lot of jargon. My community frankly, has earned it and so I don’t dumb things down,” Price said. “I’m not a hoarder of details, a hoarder of information. I have been privileged enough for people to pour into me at every phase of my life and at every phase of my education. If people were not generous with me, I would not be where I am today.”
Price graduated from PVAMU magna cum laude in 1995 and returned to the University in 2019 when then-president Ruth Simmons recruited her to lead PVAMU’s African American Studies Initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation. She earned her Ph.D. in political science from the Ohio State University and taught on the East Coast for nearly two decades.
George Floyd Memorial Lecture Series
After George Floyd’s murder, the Houston Public Library launched the Race and Social Justice digital project to document the pulse of communities regarding police brutality and criminal justice reform.
Following the success of the first lecture, the African American History Research Center at the Gregory Campus launched the George Floyd Memorial Lecture Series in 2022, exploring issues relating to Houston’s Black community.
Price, who was the guest speaker this year, said Floyd’s demise is a wound for all Houstonians as he hailed for the city.
“George Floyd’s death inspired the largest mass protest ever in this country…they put caution to the wind and said, ‘This will not stand,’” she said. “We wanted to be able to memorialize him.”
New book on the horizon
The author of two critically acclaimed books, Dreaming Blackness: Black Nationalism and African American Public Opinion and The Race Whisperer: Barack Obama and the Political Uses of Race, Price is writing her third book based on PVAMU’s fight for voting access since the 1970s.
As an avid researcher, Price was moved by a 1979 Supreme Court case, which ruled that denying residency rights to college students for voting purposes is unconstitutional, guaranteeing the rights of students across the country to vote where they attend college.
Earlier, in July 1971, the 26th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. Five years later, students at PVAMU filed a lawsuit claiming they were being denied the right to vote because they were not technically residents of Prairie View, Texas.
“Yet, Prairie View students still have to fight generation after generation after generation,” Price stated. “Being a scholar who knows that story and who is from that community, it’s gonna be my privilege to tell it.”
Now, the university’s PVAMU HBCU Voting Rights Lab serves as a platform to highlight students’ experiences at PVAMU and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the context of voter suppression.
Mission to document history
Price has also provided commentary for notable media outlets like The New York Times, CNN and Vox and contributed to the documentary on former President Barack Obama, “Through the Fire: The Legacy of Barack Obama.” But, she does not want to limit herself to merely analyzing injustice, she aims to encourage people to proactively change the status quo.
Her work at the Simmons Center reflects that mission. From documenting the work of PVAMU’s voter rights lab to a forthcoming report on the history of slavery at the Alta Vista plantation that preceded the university’s establishment, the center pledges to chronicle the university’s past and present.
As PVAMU nears its 150th anniversary in 2026, Price sees her research as an opportunity to preserve history.
“You would be hard pressed at certain points in our history to know a Black farmer, teacher, nurse or architect in this state who wasn’t educated at Prairie View up until the 1960s and the end of segregation,” she said. “Children in this state knew of this as a place where Black people could educate themselves out of poverty. They could educate themselves into the middle class and into leadership. We still do that today.”
Despite being mandated by the state to steer clear of Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity (DEI) work, Price aims to bring awareness to the systemic headwinds still facing Black scholarship. Tannistha Sinha:
Navigating DEI mandates, Price explained that the current law “does not change the kinds of research scholars engage in” at her research center, including peer-reviewed courses.
“We do research and not DEI…This is all within the bounds of the law as we understand it today,” Price said. “I am trying my best to keep doing my job to a standard that is respected by my peers nationally and to my own satisfaction.
“We collect stories and oral histories, we do surveys and do the things that are the building blocks of people understanding what kind of social change needs to happen. You can’t make policy if you don’t have research. You can’t make laws if you don’t have research.”
What’s next for Price?
Now, more than two decades into her academic career, Price has no plans of slowing down. She wants her legacy to live on through her students and hopes she helped them do their best work. She reminds them they are not special but have been “given extra,” when there are community members who are smarter than they are.
“It’s not because we outwitted racism or sexism or economic injustice. It’s because we got a nudge,” she said. “We got a door open that they didn’t get and because of that, we can’t go back to our communities pretending otherwise.”
Concerned about “what’s happening generally” around African American studies and related programs, she hopes the research she contributed to morphs into larger system change.
“It’s my hope that people get behind it and understand why it’s important to our city,” Price said. “It’s important for you to show up. If you participate and a lot of people are participating, it’s harder for them to shut things down.”
