Barbara Ransby

Barbara Ransby is an historian, writer, and longtime political activist. She is Professor of History, Gender and Women’s Studies, and African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Ransby has published dozens of articles and essays in popular and scholarly venues. She is most notably the author of an award-winning biography of civil rights activist Ella Baker, entitled Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision.

She is also the author of Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson, and most recently Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century*.She serves on the editorial boards of The Black Commentator (an online journal); the London-based journal, Race and Class; the Justice, Power and Politics Series at University of North Carolina Press; and the Scholar’s Advisory Committee of Ms. magazine. In the summer of 2012 she became the second Editor-in-Chief of SOULS, a critical journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society published quarterly.

Professor Ransby received a BA in History from Columbia University and an MA and PhD in History from the University of Michigan.