Blair L.M. Kelley is Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate History Programs 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. Through a re-examination of the earliest struggles against Jim Crow, Kelley exposes the fullness of African American efforts to resist the passage of segregation laws dividing trains and streetcars by race in the early Jim Crow era. Focusing on three key cities—New Orleans, Richmond, and Savannah—Kelley tells the stories of the brave but little-known men and women who faced down the violence of lynching and urban race riots to contest segregation. Right to Ridewon the 2010 Letitia Woods Brown Best Book Award from the Association of Black Women Historians.

Kelley’s work as a scholar and teacher is grounded in the notion that confronting the history of race in America is essential to an understanding of our contemporary politics.  Her scholarship, which has been published in scholarly journals and edited volumes, centers on the history of African American resistance to segregation. Also Professor Kelley writes and presents work on African American women’s history, urban history, legal history, and southern history. She teaches courses on African American history, Civil Rights, black popular culture, oral history, and Katrina and the history of New Orleans.

Active inside the academy and out, Kelley’s work was featured on WUNC’s The State of Things, and has provided expert commentary for the New York Times, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Grio.com, Democracy Now, and Blogher.com. She has written several blogs for Salon.com and her blog Unabated Protest is featured on the UNC Press blog site.

Professor Kelley received her B.A. from the University of Virginia in History and African and African American Studies, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Duke University. She is a proud resident of Durham, North Carolina where she lives with her husband and daughter.

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