Tyler D. Parry is an Associate Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, he received a bachelor's degree in History as summa cum laude from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2008. He then journeyed toward the Atlantic and earned a doctoral degree in history from the University of South Carolina in 2014. His research examines slavery in the Americas, cultures in the African diaspora, the historical memory of slavery in the United States, and how oppressed populations resist state power. 

Parry’s first book, Jumping the Broom: The Surprising Multicultural Origins of a Black Wedding Ritual, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. It is the first comprehensive examination of the “broomstick wedding,” a popular marital tradition usually associated with Black Americans. In 2022, Jumping the Broom was awarded the American Folklore Society’s Wayland D. Hand Prize for the best book combining historical and folkloric methods. He is also co-editor with Robert Greene, II of Invisible No More: The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina, published in 2021 by the University of South Carolina Press. Parry also contributes to various journals, blogs, and newspapers, and his essays appear in publications like the Journal of African American History, the Journal of Southern History, Past and Present, Slavery and Abolition, The Washington Post, Jacobin, Black Perspectives, and the Nevada Independent, among others. 

Parry teaches a wide variety of courses within the University, with topics that include: racism and the environment; African American history; cultural history; the African Diaspora; ethnicity in Southern Nevada; African American Film and Media; the history of racism; and critical perspectives on policing. An engaged public speaker, he frequently provides his expertise in both media and print journalism through outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, Insider, Teen Vogue, Nevada Public Radio, Telemundo, The Hill, Las Vegas Review-Journal, and various local news stations in the Las Vegas valley. In 2023, Parry was selected as an “Alumnus of the Year” by the University Libraries at UNLV.

Parry is currently working on several book projects dealing with social justice, historical memory, community resistance, and popular culture. The first book is co-authored with historian Charlton W. Yingling (University of Louisville) that examines how Europeans and Euro-Americans used canines to attack and subordinate Black people who resisted slavery and oppression. He is also researching the history of policing throughout Greater Las Vegas, using untapped archival resources, newspaper reports, and interviews to provide a new perspective on the often-fraught history of community-police relations in Sin City. The third book explores the most pervasive myths surrounding slavery in the United States, exploring how they were created and how they are perpetuated in modern popular culture. Lastly, he is writing a biographical history of the 1982 movie White Dog, a controversial film exploring how anti-Black racism is conditioned through the character of a racist German Shepherd. The book examines how and why this movie became the subject of intense controversy during the last two decades of the twentieth century, and how it quietly acquired a cult following throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.