Dr. Joy Kinard
Superintendent of Alabama’s Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site and Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail
Kinard’s 20-year NPS career reflects an abiding interest in the preservation and advancement of stories pertinent to African-American and American heritage. She has held multiple leadership roles, including her current 4-year tenure as the first superintendent of Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument; a term as National Capital Parks-East central district manager, where she managed the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site, National Archives for Black Women’s History, and Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site, among other units; and assignments as acting chief of interpretation, education, and cultural resource manager at the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site and Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts. She also served as a park ranger at various sites in Virginia and Maryland, educating visitors on the stories of prominent figures in American history, including George Washington, Frederick Douglass and Robert E. Lee.
A scholar of African-American history and culture, Kinard contributed to the seminal African American National Biography Encyclopedia and published her first book, The Man, The Movement, The Museum: The Journey of John R. Kinard as the First African American Director of a Smithsonian Institution Museum in tribute to her father in 2017. She taught African American History, U.S. History to 1877 and other courses as an adjunct professor for seven years with the University of the District of Columbia’s Department of History and was lead curator on the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Celebrating a Century of Sisterhood, Scholarship & Service commemorative exhibition.
Dr. Kinard received her degrees from Livingstone College and Howard University.