Tara Roberts is a National Geographic Storytelling Fellow and former fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Open Documentary Lab. She is an editor and storyteller who has spent over two decades amplifying and sharing the stories of girls and women along with African Americans.

Michael W. Twitty is a culinary historian and food writer who documents and educates on African American culinary traditions of the historic South and its connections with the wider African Atlantic world, as well as parent traditions in Africa.

Bernard Powers is the founding director of the College of Charleston’s Center for the Study of Slavery and a professor emeritus of history at the university. He’s an expert on African American history and culture and the role of slavery in American history.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and department chair of African American studies at Princeton University.

Derrick E. White is a professor of history and African American and Africana studies at the University of Kentucky.

Daina Ramey Berry is Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History and chair of the history department at the University of Texas, Austin.

Leah Wright Rigueur is an associate professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a visiting associate professor/Harry S. Truman Associate Professor of American History at Brandeis University.

Tiya Miles is a professor of history at Harvard University. Her new book, “All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake,” traces a gift from an enslaved mother to her daughter as it passed through the generations.

Karsonya (Kaye) Wise Whitehead is an associate professor of communication and African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland.