Bartholomew Jones wears many hats. Co-founder of Memphis’s Cxffeeblack and Anti-Gentrification Cxffee Club is a rapper, community organizer, filmmaker, clothing and footwear designer, and multiple finalist for both the Sprudgie Awards and Sprudge Design Awards. And he can now add guest lecturer to his CV. Jones has joined the Vanderbilt University faculty and will teach classes at the intersection of coffee, hip-hop and Afrofuturism.
Jones and Vanderbilt have had a symbiotic relationship for several years. In 2024, Vanderbilt helped facilitate the second phase of the Cxffee Black Barista Exchange Program, which brought African coffee professionals to America to hone their craft in Black-owned coffee shops in the Southeast. Meanwhile, Jones’ efforts to decolonize coffee have been highlighted as part of Vanderbilt’s Coffee Equity Lab, part of the Culture, Advocacy and Leadership (CAL) Program.
Beginning in the spring 2026 semester, Jones joined Vanderbilt as an entrepreneur-in-residence within CAL. In this role, he will give guest lectures, another one titled: God Don’t Make No Junk: Sample The Root Of Coffee Through Hip-Hop And Afrofuturism. The lecture description is as follows: “Black knowledge systems are not lost – they can be recovered and are critical to the innovation needed to unlock the future the industry seeks. The connection between the African diaspora and the African continent has never been completely severed. It lives in the plant. It lives in the cup. It lives in the name.”
According to the press release, “Jones is believed to be the first scholar-practitioner in the United States to create a university-level curriculum that examines the $500 billion global coffee industry through Black history, Afrofuturism, hip-hop pedagogy and reparative economic design.”
The lecture, open to the public, will take place on Friday, March 27vol from 1:25 p.m. to 2:25 p.m. at Vanderbilt’s College of Arts and Letters. This will be followed by a reception and opening of the installation during the last coffee of the week with Cxffeeblack at 2:30 p.m.
“You don’t invent the future of coffee. You have to remember it,” says Jones. “Everything the industry celebrates as innovation was already being practiced by Black and Indigenous people long before specialty coffee existed.”
Jones will remain as entrepreneur-in-residence until at least the end of the semester on May 15. Jones and Cxffeeblack will also be at World of Coffee San Diego next month, where they will make an “vital discovery” with Awake Labs. More details on this will be posted here on Sprudge.
