Barbara Ransby is an award-winning historian, biographer, and social activist. She is the Ella Baker Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of the critically acclaimed biography of civil rights leader Ella Baker. Ransby is an expert on the history of African American women, the civil rights movement, and the Black radical tradition. Her work has been widely published in scholarly and popular outlets, and she is a frequent commentator in the media.