History

Cicero M. Fain III Profile

Assistant Provost for Access and Opportunity
Harris Hall 113
fainc@marshall.edu

Biography

Cicero M. Fain, III, Ph.D., is a fourth-generation Huntingtonian. He is currently the Assistant Provost of Access and Opportunity at Marshall University. He received his B.A. from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and his M.Ed. from George Mason University. He is the recipient of the Carter G. Woodson Fellowship from Marshall University and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from The Ohio State University. His teaching career includes positions at Marshall, Ohio University-Southern, Niagara University, and the College of Southern Maryland. His first book, Black Huntington: An Appalachian Story, published in 2019 by the University of Illinois Press, was a finalist for the Weatherford Award and was awarded the Literary Merit Award by the West Virginia Library Association in 2021. He served as the Assistant Director of Research and Outreach for the Appalachian Freedom Heritage Tourism Initiative, a 9-county, 3-state project that placed 27 Tri-state area sites, including the first 3 in Cabell County’s history, on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. He is the co-editor of Black Appalachia: Race, Place, and Identity, the follow-up anthology to 1985’s seminal Blacks in Appalachia, and the 2026 Thomas D. Clark Foundation Medallion Award winner, scheduled for September publication by the University Press of Kentucky. He serves as the Marshall Liaison to the Appalachian Studies Association and was the chair of the 49th annual Appalachian Studies Association Conference held in March 2026. He serves on editorial board of the Journal of Appalachian Studies and the boards of the Cabell-Huntington Convention & Visitors Bureau Cabell/Wayne counties, the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, and the Carter G. Woodson Memorial Foundation.

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