• Jimmy Butts earned his PhD at the University of Louisville in the Pan-African Studies department. He is a specialist in Malcolm X Studies. His research focuses on Black religion and radicalism in the 19th and 20th centuries with an emphasis on the discourses and practices that operate at the intersection of religion and violence. His current book project examines the way Malcolm X constructed a revolutionary form of religion over the course of his public life. His work has appeared in the Journal of Black Studies, the Journal of African American Studies, and Siyabonana: The Journal of Africana Studies.

    • Ph.D. in Pan-African Studies, University of Louisville
    • MDiv. in Islamic Studies, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
    • B.A. in Christian Ministry, Ohio Mid-Western College
    • Associate Degree in Bible, Kingdom Life Bible College

    • "Al-Hajj Umar Taal or El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X)? Case Studies on Islam and Interreligious Pan-African Unity" in Religions, vol. 16, no, 5 (2025).
    • "Black Power's Deification of the Son: A Freudian Reading of the Reverse Oedipus Relationship between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad" in Dustin Byrd, ed., Sigmund Freud as a Critical Social Theorist: Psychoanalysis and the Neurotic in Contemporary Society (Brill, 2024).
    • "The Suppression and Liberation of Malcolm's Personal Agency: Malcolm X and His Religio-Racial Understanding of White People" in Journal of Black Studies, vol. 55, no. 3 (2024): pp. 215-231.
    • "That Further by Faith': Ancestral Futurity, Reincarnation, and the Conjuration of Denmark Vesey's Revolutionary Religious Perspective" in Religions, vol. 14, no. 9 (2023).
    • "Malcolm X, Pan-Africanism, and the Organization of African Unity: Appealing to Shepherds on Behalf of Their Lost Sheep at the 1964 OAU Summit" in Journal of Black Studies, vol. 54, no. 2 (2023) pp. 111-135.

    • Black Studies
    • Malcolm X Studies
    • African American Religious History
    • African and African American Islam
    • Africana Religions
    • Africana Critical Theory
    • Religion and Violence in the Africana World
    • Pan-Africanism

    • Religion and Violence in African American History
    • The African American Experience Since Reconstruction
    • The African American Experience Through Reconstruction