Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard. He is an acclaimed author and critic who has unearthed literary gems. He also has produced, written, and hosted an array of documentary films for public television, including Africa's Great Civilizations , Finding Your Roots , Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise , and The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross . Gates is the recipient of 55 honorary degrees and numerous prizes. A member of the first class awarded "genius grants" by the MacArthur Foundation in 1981, he was, in 1998, the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. In addition, he was named to Time 's 25 Most Influential Americans list in 1997, Ebony 's Power 150 list in 2009, and Ebony 's Power 100 list in 2010 and 2012. Tonya Bolden is the award-winning author of many notable books for children and young adults, among them the Coretta Scott King Author Honor-winning Maritcha: A Nineteenth Century American Girl , which was also a James Madison Book Award Winner and CCBC Best Book of the Year.

Ms. Bolden's Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty was named a Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year and is the recipient of the Carter G. Woodson Book Award. Ms. Bolden is a two-time NAACP Image Award nominee, and Winner of the 2016 Children's Book Guild of Washington, DC.'s Nonfiction Award for Body of Work.