Robin D. G. Kelley is the Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in US History at UCLA. His books include  Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original; Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America; and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. His essays have appeared in The Boston Review, The New York Times, Color Lines, Counterpunch, Re-Thinking Marxism, New Labor Forum, and Souls, to name a few.