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Mary Frances Berry has been a Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History since 1987. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan and JD from the University of Michigan Law School. She is the author of nine books, including *And Justice For All: The United States Commission On Civil Rights And the Struggle For Freedom in America* (2009); *My Face is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations* (2005); *The Pig Farmer's Daugher and Other Tales of American Justice: Episodes of Racism and Sexism in the Courts from 1865 to the Present* (1999); *Black Resistance, White Law: A History of Constitutional Racism in America* (1994, orig. 1971); *The Politics of Parenthood: Child Care, Women's Rights, and the Myth of the Good Mother* (1993); *Why ERA Failed: Politics, Women's Rights, and the Amending Process of the Constitution* (1986); *Long Memory: The Black Experience in America, with John Blassingame* (1982); and *Military Necessity and Civil Rights Policy: Black Citizenship and the Constitution, 1861-1868* (1977). Professor Berry has had a distinguished career in public service. From 1980 to 2004, she was a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and from 1993-2004 served as Chair. Between 1977 and 1980, Dr. Berry served as the Assistant Secretary for Education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). She has also served as Provost of the University of Maryland and Chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder. In recognition of her scholarship and public service, Professor Berry has received 32 honorary doctoral degrees and many awards, including the NAACP's Roy Wilkins Award, the Rosa Parks Award of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Ebony Magazine Black Achievement Award. She is one of 75 women featured in *I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America*. Sienna College Research Institute and the Women's Hall of Fame designated her one of "America's Women of the Century." Professor Berry teaches the History of American Law, and the History of Law and Social Policy. She also advises students in African American History.

Neil deGrasse Tyson was born and raised in New York City where he was educated in the public schools clear through his graduation from the Bronx High School of Science. Tyson went on to earn his BA in Physics from Harvard and his PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia.

Philip Dray has been a contributor to *The Boston Globe*, *The New York Times*, *The New York Post*, and *Mother Jones*. From 1994-2000 he was a staff writer at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). He has been an adjunct faculty member at the New School, teaching an undergraduate course, "The History of the Civil Rights Movement." Dray is a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. He holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts from the University of Minnesota, with a concentration in American Studies, and is a veteran of workshops in Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota and Harvard University. Philip Dray is the author of *At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America*, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and made him a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and *Stealing God's Thunder: Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod and the Invention of America,* and the coauthor of the New York Times Notable Book *We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi*. He lives in Brooklyn.

Anthony M. Sammarco is a noted historian and author of more than forty books on the history of Boston and surrounding cities and towns. Sammarco teaches history at the Urban College of Boston.

Jill McDonough has taught incarcerated college students through Boston University's Prison Education Program since 1999. Her poems have appeared in *The Threepenny Review*, *The New Republic*, and *Slate*. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.