Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA.  His books include, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression; Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class; Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original; and Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies, co-edited with Colin Kaepernick and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.  His essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Nation, New York Times, New Yorker, Village Voice, Dissent, Hammer and Hope, and The Boston Review, for which he also serves as Contributing Editor.