Ameenah Shakir is a 20th Century U.S. historian of race and medicine.  Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and explores the intersection of race, medicine, and gender. She is working on a book titled Birthing Liberation, a biography of Dr. Helen O. Dickens, a black physician activist who worked to desegregate medical education, developed cancer prevention programs, and fostered diasporic connections with women physicians and black club women during the post-World War II era.