Robert F. Jefferson, Jr. is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of the Africana Studies Program and at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Jefferson earned his doctorate in African American History from the University of Michigan.  His research focuses on the relationship between race, gender, and citizenship in Twentieth Century United States history.  He is the author of Fighting for Hope: African Americans and the Ninety-third Infantry Division in World War II and Postwar America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) which was nominated for the William Colby Book Prize and is currently working on a second book titled Color and Disability:  The Many Lives of Vasco Hale in Twentieth Century America. He has written extensively on the relationship between African American GIs and their communities during the Second World War, the Black Panther Party, and the lived experiences of Black Disabled Veterans in the twentieth century.  He has also written articles that have appeared in Oral History and Public Memories (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), the Journal of Family History, the Annals of Iowa, Quaderni Storici (Bologna), Contours:  A Journal of the African Diaspora, and the Historian.  He also holds memberships in the American Historical Association, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the National Council of Black Studies, the Society of Military History, the Western History Association, the Social Science History Association, and is a participating speaker in the Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lectureship Program.