Mary Ellen Curtin is currently a professor in the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies at American University in Washington DC. She earned her PhD in history from Duke University and wrote much of her first book, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865-1900 (University Press of Virginia, 2000), a social and political history of convict leasing, as a fellow at the Carter G Woodson Institute. She served as a consultant for the PBS documentary Slavery by Another Name, (2012). Her latest book, She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan's Life and Legacy in Black Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) won the Liz Carpenter Award for the best book on Texas women given by the TSHA. In the spring of 2025, Dr. Curtin taught at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in the Humanities and Social Sciences.