Unsung

Michelle D. Commander is the associate director and curator of the Schomburg Center, a historic branch of New York Public Library and the world's foremost archive of slavery material. She previously served as associate professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee. Kevin Young is the director of Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and poetry editor of the New Yorker. He was previously the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He is the author of a number of books of poetry and prose, including Stones, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, Jelly Roll: A Blues, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry; and Bunk, a New York Times Notable Book, longlisted for the National Book Award. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.