Blair L.M. Kelley is Assistant Dean for Interdisciplinary Studies and International Programs in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University. She is the author of the award-winning book, Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson. Right to Ride won the prestigious Letitia Woods Brown Best Book Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. Kelley is currently at work on a new book project called Black Folk: The Promise of the Black Working Class under contract at Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton and Company.

Active inside the academy and out, Kelley has produced and hosted her own podcast and has been a guest on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris Perry Show, NPR’s Here and Now, and WUNC’s The State of Things. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Root, The Grio, Ebony, Salon, and Jet Magazine. Highlighted as one of the top-tweeting historians by History News Network, Kelley was among the first generation of historians active on twitter. She has been tweeting as @profblmkelley for more than ten years and she has over 40,000 followers.

Kelley received her B.A. from the University of Virginia in History and African and African American Studies.  She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in History, and graduate certificates in African and African American Studies and Women’s Studies at Duke University.