ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Quintard Taylor is the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History and professor emeritus at the University of Washington. He is the author of renowned works such as In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990 and America I Am, Black Facts: The Timelines of African American History, 1601–2008, as well as co-editor of several volumes, including African American Women Confront the West, 1600–2000 and Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California. He also coauthored Dr. Sam, Soldier, Educator, Advocate, Friend: An Autobiography, and he is the founder of BlackPast.org, a website with seventy-five hundred entries on African American and Global African history which had over six million worldwide visitors in 2020.

Norman Rice was the first African American elected mayor of Seattle, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, CEO and president of Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle, and CEO of The Seattle Foundation. In collaboration with the Civic Engagement for the 21st Century Project, Mayor Rice continues to help develop local infrastructure, expand education access, and encourage social uplift initiatives in Seattle.

Quin’Nita Cobbins-Modica is assistant professor of history at Seattle Pacific University, where she is a historian of black women’s activism in the American West. She is the coauthor of Seattle on the Spot: The Photographs of Al Smith and the former executive director of BlackPast.org, an invaluable online collection of articles, research, and profiles regarding African American and Global African histories.

Albert S. Broussard, Cornerstone Faculty Fellow and Professor in the Department of History at Texas A&M University, has authored numerous books on American and African American history, notably Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900–1954, Expectations of Equality: A History of Black Westerners, and African-American Odyssey: The Stewarts, 1853–1963. Alongside his over forty years of research and mentorship, Dr. Broussard has served on the board of editors for the Pacific Historical Review, as president of the Oral History Association, and as president of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.