Ashley Howard earned a PhD in History from the University of Illinois and is an assistant professor of African American Studies at the University of Iowa. Her research interests include African Americans in the Midwest; the intersection between race, class, and gender; and the global history of racial violence. Her book, Midwest Unrest: 1960s Urban Rebellions and the Black Freedom Movement analyzes the uprisings grounded in the way race, class, gender, and region played critical and overlapping roles in defining resistance to racialized oppression. Her article "Then the Burnings Began" is the winner of the 2018 James L. Sellers Memorial Prize. As an educator, Dr. Howard’s primary goal is to teach students to be effective writers, critical thinkers, and active world citizens. She is also dedicated to sharing her scholarly knowledge outside of the traditional campus community. Specifically, Howard has greatly valued teaching opportunities where she can provide quality, university-level education to those with limited access, including underserved schools and correctional facilities.

Michelle Adams is the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Her research centers on race discrimination, school desegregation, affirmative action, and housing law. Adams is the winner of the 2024 L. Hart Wright Teaching Award. She has published in The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Texas Law Review, and other scholarly journals. Her work also has appeared in the popular media, including a piece in The New Yorker commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act. In addition, she has appeared as an expert commentator on the Netflix series Amend: The Fight for America and the Showtime series Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court. Adams is the author of The Containment: Detroit, The Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North, which tells the story of the critical desegregation struggle that ended the Brown v. Board of Education era. Adams served as a board member of the Innocence Project and was a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society Civil Appeals and Law Reform Unit.

Hettie Williams is a historian of American history with a focus on the twentieth century, African Americans, race, and women’s history. She is currently an Associate Professor of African American history in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University located in West Long Branch, New Jersey. She has co-edited/authored five books including Bury My Heart in a Free Land: Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History and The Georgia of the North: Black Women and the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey. She is in the process of completing several writing projects including screenplays: a thriller about Black women and the global haircare market, a dark romantic comedy, and a historical drama. Williams is also currently a research historian for the upcoming documentary My Buddy: The WWII 369th Documentary Project. Her most immediate project is a non-fiction book on the history of Black women in rock and roll entitled The British Invasion in Reverse: Black Women Rockers in the U.S. and Europe from Rosetta Tharpe to Grace Jones.

Dr. Brian Kwoba is an associate professor of history and Director of the African and African American Studies program at the University of Memphis. His research centers on political thought and social movements among people of African descent in the United States and across the globe. While completing his doctoral degree at the University of Oxford, he co-founded the Oxford Pan-Afrikan Forum (OXPAF) and the #RhodesMustFall movement to decolonize education at Oxford. He is co-editor of Rhodes Must Fall: The Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of Empire. Over the past two decades, Dr. Kwoba has been an activist on issues including peace building, immigrant workers' rights, socialism, climate justice, Falastin, and the movement for Black lives. His new book, Hubert Harrison: Forbidden Genius of Black Radicalism was published by UNC Press.