Blair LM Kelley, Ph.D. is an award-winning author, historian, and scholar of the African American experience. In July 2025 she will assume the leadership of the National Humanities Center (NHC), the only independent center for advanced study in the world dedicated exclusively to the humanities. A nationally recognized public historian, Kelley has worked to amplify the histories of Black people, chronicling the everyday impact of their activism. Prior to being named president and director of the NHC, she was the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the director of the Center for the Study of the American South, the first Black woman to serve in that role in the center’s thirty-two-year history.

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