FRANCES JONES-SNEED is a professor of history (PhD, University of Missouri) and Director of Women Studies at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Massachusetts. Jones-Sneed has taught and researched local history for over twenty-five years. She directed two National Endowment for the Humanities grants  entitled “The Shaping Role of Place in African American Biography”in 2006 and “Of Migrations and Renaissances: Harlem/NY & South Side/Chicago, 1915–75” in 2008 both “We the People” projects.  She spearheaded a national conference on African American biography in September 2006, is co-director of the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Heritage Trail, a former board member of MassHumanities, and is presently a member of  the Samuel Harrison Society. She was a 2008 NEH Summer Fellow at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University and is currently working on a monograph about W.E.B. Du Bois. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.