Keynote Speaker

Hasan Kwame Jeffries is a historian who teaches, researches, and writes about the African American experience with a focus on historical understanding and civic engagement.

He chronicled the civil rights movement in the 10-part Audible Originals series, Great Figures of the Civil Rights Movement, and told the powerful story of grassroots organizing and the Black Power movement in Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt, praised by reviewers as “the book historians of the Black freedom movement have been waiting for.”

Jeffries has worked extensively in public history. He served as lead scholar and primary scriptwriter for the $27 million redesign of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He now chairs the board of The Montpelier Foundation, which stewards the Virginia estate of James Madison, helping to shape a more inclusive public interpretation of America’s founding.

He regularly lends historical insight to national conversations about race and democracy, appearing in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, on NPR, CNN, and MSNBC. His expertise has also shaped several documentary film projects, including Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World (PBS) and Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power (NBC/Peacock). His TEDx Talk, “Why We Must Confront the Painful Parts of U.S. History,” has been viewed more than 2 million times.

In 2023, the King Arts Center in Columbus, Ohio, honored him with a Legacy and Legends Award for his contributions to public history.

A passionate educator, Jeffries has long advocated for teaching what he calls “Hard History.” This led him to edit Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement, a volume of essays offering strategies for teaching civil rights history with accuracy and honesty. He also hosted all four seasons of the podcast, Teaching Hard History, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice division. Through professional development workshops, he works directly with school districts to build anti-racist education initiatives and strengthen culturally responsive social studies instruction.

At the Ohio State University, Jeffries is a College of Arts and Sciences Alumni Associate Professor in the Department of History. Known for his dynamic teaching, he has received several awards, including the university’s highest recognition for teaching — the Ohio State Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Jeffries is a proud graduate of Morehouse College (Bachelor of Arts in history, 1994), and earned his doctorate in American history from Duke University in 2002, specializing in African American history.