Albert Murray (1916-2013) was born in Alabama and graduated from Tuskegee Institute in 1939. His books include South to a Very Old Place, The Hero and the Blues, Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree, The Seven League Boots, The Magic Keys, and Stomping the Blues, among others. With Wynton Marsalis and others he was a co-founder of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Murray's collected works are published in two volumes by Library of America.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African American Research at Harvard University. An award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored or coauthored twenty-four books and created twenty documentary films. For Library of America, he has edited volumes collecting the writings of Frederick Douglass and, with Paul Devlin, Albert Murray. Less