Kathleen Thompson‘s interest in black history started when she was a contributor to Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, 1992). She went on to be associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Black Women (New York: Facts on File, 1994). With Darlene Clark Hine, she wrote A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America (New York: Broadway Books, 1998) and then served on the Board of Senior Editors of the second edition of Black Women in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). With Hilary Mac Austin, she has published three visual history books: America’s Children: Images of Childhood from Early America to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003), Children of the Depression (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), and The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). She has also written more than one hundred books for young adults.