Robert G. O’Meally is the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he has served on the faculty for twenty-five years. The founder and director of Columbia’s Center for Jazz Studies, O'Meally is the author of The Craft of Ralph Ellison, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday, The Jazz Singers, and Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey.

James Perla is Special Assistant at the Carter G. Woodson Institute. He began working with Deborah E. McDowell in 2015-2016 on an early iteration of the Julian Bond Papers Project. From 2016-2019, he managed the Citizen Justice Initiative, a grant funded project that offered experiential learning opportunities to Charlottesville high school and undergraduate students. He produced the “Notes on the State” oral history and podcast series, which re-examined Thomas Jefferson’s legacy on the occasion of the University’s Bicentennial Celebration in 2019.