Peggy A. Brooks-Bertram, Dr. PH., Ph.D.

Dr. Peggy Brooks-Bertram is a native of Baltimore, Maryland.   She completed a B.A. in Political Science at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, and later earned both a Master in Public Health and a Doctor of Public Health from The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health.  In June 2002, Brooks-Bertram received a second  Doctor of Philosophy in American Studies from the University at Buffalo  She has worked in higher education both in faculty and administrative positions and in special services to developmentally disabled populations.  She is also a lecturer in health, education, and community activism and is a poet/playwright, and is a nationally recognized scholar on ancient African history, namely the Cushites of ancient Ethiopia.

 
Dr. Bertram is the Co-Founder of the Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women, Inc., currently located at the University at Buffalo.  She is the co-editor and author of the book series entitled,   Uncrowned Queens:  African American Women Community Builders of Western New York, Vols. 1-3 and a fourth volume Uncrowned Queens:  African American Women Community Builders of Oklahoma: 1907-2007.  Dr. Bertram, along with her colleague is also Executive Producer and Co-Host of a local cable television program entitled, Illuminations.  Dr. Bertram has been a resident in the Buffalo community since 1986 and during that time has worked to build important community organizations including Concerned Parents and Citizens for Quality Education, Inc., the WASET Saturday School for African American children and the Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women, Inc.

Dr. Bertram is also a historian and biographer on the life of Drusilla Dunjee Houston, author of the poem after whom the Uncrowned Queens Institute is named:  America’s Uncrowned Queens, 1917. To date Dr. Bertram's publications on Dunjee Houston includes a book chapter featured in the Oklahoma Centennial Encyclopedia Project, 2007; a chapter on Drusilla Dunjee Houston in the encyclopedia, Black Women in America, edited by Darlene Clark Hine for Oxford University Press (2005); Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empires: Book II, Origin of Civilization from the Cushites by Drusilla Dunjee Houston a lost manuscript by Houston, ‘Origin of Civilization from the Cushites,”  which was edited and published by Peggy Brooks-Bertram, Bertram Publishing, 2007.  She is currently working on the biography of Drusilla Dunjee Houston.

 In recognition of her many contributions, Dr. Bertram was inducted into the Western New York Women’s Hall of Fame in March, 2007.  In 2006 she received the Keeper of the Flame Award from the National Women’s Hall of Fame and in 2005 she received the NCCJ Sisterhood/Brotherhood Education Award, and numerous others.  In 2001, Morgan State University awarded her the university's first Distinguished Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to African American History and Culture.  

Peggy Brooks-Bertram currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society and is a member of the Afro-American Historical Society of the Niagara Frontier, Inc. She is also a member of the St. John Baptist Buffalo Hospice House Project.