V. P. Franklin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Education at the University of California, Riverside. He has served as the Editor of The Journal of African American History (2001-2018) and is the author of books including Living Our Stories, Telling Our Truths: Autobiography and the Making of the African American Intellectual Tradition, and co-author of My Soul Is a Witness: A Chronology of the Civil Rights Era, 1954–1965.