Kali GrossNational Endowment for the Humanities Professor of African American StudiesChair

Kali Nicole Gross earned her B.A. from Cornell University in Africana Studies and her Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of African American Studies, the Publications Director for the Association of Black Women Historians (2019-2021), and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians.

Her primary research explores Black women’s experiences in the U.S. criminal justice system. Her expertise and opinion pieces have been featured in press outlets such as Vanity Fair, TIME, The Root, BBC News, Ebony, HuffPo, Warscapes, The Washington Post, and Jet. She has appeared on ABC, C-Span, NBC, NPR, and other media venues.

Her award-winning books include Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910, winner of the 2006 Leticia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize, and Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America, winner of the 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction. Her latest book, co-authored with Daina Ramey Berry, is A Black Women’s History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2020).

Her numerous grants and fellowships include the prestigious Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Scholar-in-Residence, 2007 and 2000, the Ford Foundation, Postdoctoral Fellowship, hosted at Princeton University, 2001 – 2002, and she was selected to be a Public Voices Fellow for The Op-Ed Project, 2014-2015.

She is a dynamic educator, having taught students in housing projects, correctional institutions, and colleges and universities nationwide.