Robin D. G. Kelley is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Kelley is considered one of the pre-eminent contemporary scholars on Black American history. Kelley is the author of several histories on Black America, including the multiple award-winning Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (1990), a history of the Communist party’s fight for racial equality in the American South; Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (1997), a polemic against the portrayal of poor Black Americans in the “inner-city”; and a biography of Thelonious Monk, a prominent jazz musician.

Kelley was born in Harlem/Washington Heights, New York City in 1962. Harlem is one of the locations at the heart of Black American art and culture, and growing up in this neighborhood profoundly shaped Kelley and his later work. Kelley went on to earn a master’s degree in African history and a doctorate in American history from UCLA. After earning his doctorate, Kelley eventually went to teach at New York University (NYU), where he was made a full professor at the age of only 32. In 2014, he was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of his contributions to the field of history.