Timothy Walker is professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and the editor of Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad. Published by University of Massachusetts Press, Sailing to Freedom makes the case that a high percentage of successful slave escapes were achieved by using coastal

Kevin Dawson is Associate Professor of History at the University of California at Merced, and the author of Undercurrents of Power/Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora. Published by Penn Press, it is the definitive study of traditional West African relationships with water, oceans, rivers, and lakes. As Dawson reveals,

Karen Cook Bell is Associate Professor of History at Boowey State University, with an expertise in slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and women’s history. She is the author of Claiming Freedom: Race, Kinship, and Land in Nineteenth-Century Georgia, and her most recent work, Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women

Peniel Joseph is the foremost scholar of the Black Power movement, and the founding Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of the award-winning Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour/A Narrative History of Black Power