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by Colin Kaepernick (Editor), Robin D. G. Kelley (Editor), Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Editor)
"The centuries-long attack on Black history represents a strike against our very worth, brilliance, and value. We're ready to fight back. And when we fight, we win." -Colin Kaepernick
Since its founding as a discipline, Black Studies has been under relentless attack by social and political forces seeking to discredit and neutralize it. Our History Has Always Been Contraband was born out of an urgent need to respond to the latest threat: efforts to remove content from an AP African American Studies course being piloted in high schools across the United States. Edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Our History Has Always Been Contraband brings together canonical texts and authors in Black Studies, including those excised from or not included in the AP curriculum.
Author Biography
Colin Kaepernick is a Super Bowl quarterback and New York Times bestselling author who fights oppression globally. He founded the Know Your Rights Camp, which advances the liberation and well-being of Black and Brown people through education, self-empowerment, mass-mobilization, and the creation of new systems that elevate the next generation of change leaders.
Robin D. G. Kelley is Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. He is the author of Hammer and Hoe, Race Rebels, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, and Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, among other titles. His writing has been featured in the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Black Music Research Journal, African Studies Review, New York Times, The Crisis, The Nation, and Voice Literary Supplement. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes and speaks on Black politics, social movements, and racial inequality in the United States. She is the author of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership and From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, and the editor of How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Taylor is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and a professor in the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University.
