Johanna Fernandez teaches 20th Century US history and the history of social movements in the Department of History at Baruch College, CUNY. Her book The Young Lords: A Radical History was published in February 2020. In 2015, she directed and co-curated, ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York an exhibition in three NYC museums cited by the New York Times as one of the year’s Top 10, Best in Art. In 2014, Dr. Fernández sued the NYPD for its failure to honor her research-driven, Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. Her suit led to the recovery of the “lost” Handschu files, the largest repository of police surveillance documents in the country, namely over one million surveillance files of New Yorkers compiled by the NYPD between 1954-1972, including those of Malcolm X.

Professor Fernández is the editor of Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal. With Mumia Abu-Jamal she co-edited a special issue of the journal Socialism and Democracy, titled The Roots of Mass Incarceration in the US: Locking Up Black Dissidents and Punishing the Poor. Her awards include the Fulbright Scholars grant to the Middle East and North Africa and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship of the Scholars-in-Residence program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library. She is the writer and producer of the film, Justice on Trial: the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Fernández is the recipient of a B.A. in Literature and American Civilization from Brown University and a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Columbia University.

Sonia Lee is an Assistant Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis. Her book is titled Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

Alejandra Marchevsky is professor of Liberal Studies and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and affiliate faculty in Latin American Studies, at California State University, Los Angeles. Her work focuses on Latina/os, migration, and the state, and she is co-author of Not Working: Latina Immigrants, Low-Wage Jobs, and the Failure of Welfare Reform. She also serves on the executive board of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles (CHIRLA).

Frederick Douglass Opie is a Professor of History and Foodways at Babson College where he teaches course such as Race and Ethnicity in Latin America Through the Lens of Food. He is the editor of the blog foodasalens.com and the author of several books including Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala. Is most recent book is Zora Neale Hurston on Florida Food. To learn more about his work visit http://www.fredopie.com.