Jacqueline Anne Rouse (1950-2020) was a scholar of African American history. She is best known for her groundbreaking work on Southern Black women and their activism from the turn of the 20th century to the Civil Rights Movement, including leading figures such as Margaret Murray Washington, Lugenia Burns Hope, and Septima P. Clark.

A native of Virginia with a proud family history of independent black land owners in the rural piedmont, Rouse received her bachelor’s degree in Afro-American History from Howard University in 1972. Upon moving to Georgia, she completed a master’s degree in African American history from Atlanta University, where, for much of the 1980s, she served as assistant editor of The Journal of Negro History under editor Alton Hornsby, Jr. In 1983, she completed her Ph.D. in American Studies at Emory University.

After completing her doctorate in American Studies at Emory University in 1983, Rouse held teaching posts at Georgia Institute of Technology, Jackson State University, and Morehouse College. In 1991, Rouse became a professor in the history department at Georgia State University, where she taught courses on African American studies and women’s studies.

Rouse published numerous books and articles on Black women activists. Her first book was a biography of Atlanta’s leading African-American suffragette and founder of the Neighborhood Union, "Lugenia Burns Hope, Black Southern Reformer," published in 1989. She co-edited a 1990 volume titled "Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965."

A member of the Association of Black Women Historians for more than 30 years, Rouse served as the organization's national director in the mid-1990s. She was president of the Association of Social and Behavioral Scientists in 1991-1992. She also served as president of the Southern Association for Women Historians.

As one of the nation's leading scholars on Black women's history, Rouse was the recipient many awards for her scholarship and service to the profession, including the Southern Regional Educational Board's Faculty Mentor of the Year (2007), the Governor's Humanities Award (2002), and the Lorraine Williams Leadership Award from the Association of Black Women Historians (2012).

In recognition of her work mentoring students, Rouse was an honoree at the Cross-Generational Dialogues in Black Women’s History at Michigan State University's Comparative Black History Symposium in 2015. She received the Founding Mothers/Presidential Award of the Southern Association of Women Historians in 2016.

At the time of her death, Rouse was revising a manuscript on the life of South Carolinian Septima P. Clark, titled "Nurturing Seeds of Discontent: Septima P. Clark and the Promise of Citizenship."

A resident of Decatur and leader in her church, Rouse passed away on May 12, 2020, at the age of 70.

-- from Wikipedia and a tribute in Rouse's memory by the Southern Association of Women Historians