Adolph Reed, Jr. is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. A veteran activist and prolific analyst of the politics of race and class, his books include Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era, Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene and The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives.

Kenneth W. Warren is Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. His books include What Was African American Literature?, So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism, and Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literature.