LESLIE M. ALEXANDER is an associate professor of History and African American Studies at Arizona State University. She is the author of African or American? Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861; and Fear of a Black Republic: African Americans, Haiti, and the Birth of Black Internationalism. She is also coeditor of We Shall Independent Be: African American Place Making and the Struggle to Claim Space in the United States and the Encyclopedia of African American History. Alexander is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Ford Foundation Senior Fellowship.

RUSSELL RICKFORD is an associate professor of history at Cornell University and the author of We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination.