Passaic Today

When Khara Lillian Brown walks across the stage at Montclair State University’s Spring Commencement, she’ll be celebrating more than earning her bachelor’s degree in Anthropology; she’ll be celebrating overcoming extraordinary odds.

Brown was given a 3% chance to survive a severe health crisis while in college. Despite this prognosis, she persevered, thriving academically while uncovering her passion for research, community, and storytelling. Her resilience enabled her to endure multiple surgeries and intense rehabilitation and achieve original research accomplishments and prestigious scholarships.

A native of Newark, New Jersey, Brown majored in Anthropology with additional studies in Archaeology and Native American and Indigenous Studies. Her time at Montclair was marked by combining scholarship with activism. She volunteered in the campus Archaeology Lab, co-founded the club LadiesFIRST, and engaged with groups like the Native American and Indigenous Studies Club and the Coalition for Collective Liberation.

Additionally, she helped organize the University’s Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF) Program's Women’s Leadership Conference. Here, she received the Triumph Over Trauma Award, garnering recognition before hundreds of students, educators, community leaders, and artists.

Balancing academics with her health challenges presented difficulties. In 2015, Brown faced a life-threatening event after being hospitalized with catastrophic intestinal failure, which left her paralyzed and barely able to speak. Her chance of survival was estimated at just 3%. Brown's determination was evidenced by her words to her mother: “If God created the world from nothing, imagine what He could do with 3%.”

Reflecting on her achievements, she remarks, “To be able to say that I’m in three honor societies, doing my best, graduating – He obviously did some magic with that 3%.”

Brown's academic focus has been on the histories of free and formerly enslaved African American communities of the 18th and 19th centuries, a theme she presented on at the Archaeological Society of New Jersey Conference.

Under the guidance of her advisor, Christopher Matthews, Anthropology chairperson, Brown compared archaeological sites in Northern New Jersey and New York. She also participated in the James Madison's Montpelier Archaeological Field School, working alongside the descendants of enslaved individuals to map the Burial Ground for the Enslaved. Her work in this area will continue through an internship with Montpelier’s Archaeology Department.

Brown has also engaged deeply with Indigenous studies through hands-on experiences at the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm of the Ramapough Lunaape (Lenape) Nation. The tribe's ability to farm its ancestral land in Upper Ringwood, New Jersey, is compromised by industrial contamination.

Acknowledging her support system, Brown expresses gratitude for the EOF family, her professors Chris Matthews and Mark Clatterbuck, and the entire Anthropology Department, among others. She is also thankful to Chief Mann of the Turtle Clan and her co-workers.

“Khara is such an amazing person who has not only overcome so much to complete her college degree, but continues to see serving the greater good and, especially, underserved and marginalized communities as her purpose. Her impact as a student, archaeologist, educator and person will be profound,” Matthews says.

Looking ahead, Brown plans to move to Virginia to commemorate her achievements and celebrate her 30th birthday. “Now that I’m at the finish line, I can sit back and say it was worth it. In some moments, it didn’t feel possible. But perseverance – that tenacity – is what keeps me going.”

Montclair State University will hold its Commencement exercises on May 7 and 8, 2025, at Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.

Story by Marilyn Joyce Lehren, University Communications and Marketing.

Prospective students and parents can learn more about Montclair University, its Anthropology program, and other offerings from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.