Dr. Leslie Alexander is the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University, where she teaches early African American, African Diaspora, and U.S. history. Her teaching and research interests focus on slavery, Black political and intellectual thought, and resistance movements. She received her B.A. from Stanford University, her M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University, and is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Ford Foundation Senior Fellowship.

Her most recent book, Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States, (University of Illinois Press, 2022) examines how Haiti's rise as the first Black sovereign nation in the western hemisphere inspired Black political activism in the United States during the nineteenth century, especially in the realm of foreign policy. It also charts the long history of U.S. foreign policy toward Haiti, from 1804 to the present. Her first book, African or American?: Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861 (University of Illinois Press, 2008), explores Black culture, identity, and political activism during the nineteenth century.

She is also the co-editor of three volumes: Ideas in Unexpected Places: Reimagining Black Intellectual History, The Encyclopedia of African American History, and We Shall Independent Be: African American Place Making and the Struggle to Claim Space in the United States. Most recently, she co-authored a chapter in The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story.

Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and Co-President of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. She is the author of Brithright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018) and All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture (2007,) and an editor of Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (2015.) For more information visit marthasjones.com.

NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. She has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times. Hannah-Jones also earned the John Chancellor Award for Distinguished Journalism and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen's Club of New York. In 2020 she was inducted into the Society of American Historians and in 2021, into the North Carolina Media Hall of Fame. She was also named a member of the prestigious Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2016, Hannah-Jones co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which seeks to increase the number of reporters and editors of color. She holds a Master of Arts in Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina and earned her BA in History and African-American studies from the University of Notre Dame.