Ibram Xolani Kendi was born in New York City in 1982. He received undergraduate degrees in journalism and African American studies from Florida A&M University in 2004. He worked as a journalist before receiving a doctoral degree in African American studies from Temple University in 2010. He is currently an assistant professor of African American history at the University of Florida.
He has published fourteen essays in books and academic journals including The Journal of African American History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of African American Studies, and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture. His first book, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972, was written under the pen name Ibram H. Rogers. His second book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2016.
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