Randal Maurice Jelks
Randal Maurice Jelks is the Ruth N. Halls Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. He is an award-winning author and a documentary film producer. He is the author of African Americans in the Furniture City: The Struggle for Civil Rights Struggle in Grand Rapids, Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement: A Biography, Faith and Struggle in the Lives of Four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver and Muhammad Ali and Letters to Martin: Meditations on Democracy in Black America and a contributor to an edited collection of essays titled 42 Today: Jack Robinson and His Legacy. His other writings have appeared in his online sub stack Notes from the Black Bottom, the Boston Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Truthout as well as national blogs, journals, magazines and newspapers. He is currently writing book My America: Langston Hughes on Democracy (Broadleaf Books).