CONTRIBUTORS

Oliver St Clair Franklin

Co-Executive Producer and Presenter

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Oliver curated one of the first Back Film Festivals in the US (1972-78) and then produced films. He became the chief Arts and Cultural official for the City of Philadelphia (1984-90) and then became an executive at several financial services firms specializiing in institutional  investments. He has served on the Nation Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. Brown University recently acquired his library of first editions.  Oliver is a graduate of Lincoln and Oxford University where he is a Hon Fellow of Balliol College. 

Dr. Diane D. Turner

Curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University Libraries

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Dr. Diane D. Turner is Curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University Libraries. Her areas of specialization include Philadelphia jazz history, African America labor and independent Black filmmakers.

Rev. Carolyn Clarene Cavaness

Fourth-generation preacher; Graduate of Barnard College of Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary

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Rev. Carolyn Clarene Cavaness, a fourth-generation preacher, is a graduate of Barnard College of Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary. Rev. Cavaness considers herself a bridge connecting people and resources all towards creating the beloved community.

Dr. Ronald Johnson

Lynn Chair of History, Baylor University

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Dr. Ronald Johnson, Lynn Chair of History, Baylor University is the author of Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution, a reinterpretation of the American Revolution through analysis of diplomacy in the emerging United States during decades of hemispheric transformation.

Dr. James Alexander Dun

Associate Dean, Princeton University

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Dr James Alexander Dun, Associate Dean, Princeton University. Alec is the author of several essays and articles, as well as the 2016 book, Dangerous Neighbors: Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America. a historian of early America. His scholarly interests broadly include race and identity, radicalism and revolution, and slavery and antislavery.

Sean Quimby

Associate Vice Provost and Director, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

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Sean leads a staff of 50 curators, archivists, librarians and researchers and oversees special collections that comprise 300,000 printed books and nearly ten million pieces of manuscript material within the University's seven million-volume library system.

Adrienne G. Whaley

Director of Education and Community Engagement, Museum of the American Revolution

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Adrienne G. Whaley is the Director of Education and Community Engagement, Museum of the American Revolution. She designed and developed the Museum's signature school program, "Through Their Eyes," which engages more than 70,000 schoolchildren each year in the diverse stories of men, women, and children who played a role in launching America's revolutionary experiment in liberty, equality and self-government.

Craig Bruns

Chief Curator, Independence Seaport Museum

Dr. Tara A. Bynum

Associate Professor, University of Iowa

Laura C. Keim

Curator of Stenton & Lecturer in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania

Emma Lapsansky-Werner, Ph.D

Department of History (Emerita), Haverford College

David Bringham

Historical Society of Philadelphia

Dr. Kelli Racine Barnes

Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow

Brent White

Musician and Scholar

Jeremy Johnson

Cultural Education Director, Delaware Tribe of Indians

Michelle Craig McDonald

Expert in Atlantic History

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Michelle has worked for nearly three decades as an educator and administrator in university settings, museums and historic sites. Her research focuses on trade and consumer behavior in North America and the Caribbean during the 18th and 19th centuries, especially the history of coffee, and has been supported by grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, the Harvard Business School, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and the Winterthur Museum & Library. Her most recent book, Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025.