Leslie Alexander is the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She earned a PhD in History from Cornell University. She is the author of African or American? Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784–1861 as well as Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism. She also coedited the Encyclopedia of African American History and served as president of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora.