Frances Jones-Sneed is professor of history (PhD, University of Missouri) at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Massachusetts. Jones-Sneed has taught and researched local history for over twenty years. She has lived in Williamstown, Massachusetts since 1993. She is co-director of the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Heritage Trail Advisory Council and is currently working on a monograph about W.E.B. Du Bois. She also co-directed a National Endowment for the Humanities grant entitle “The Shaping Role of Place in African American Biography” and spearheaded a national conference on African American biography in September 2006. The work of this grant can be viewed at http/www.mcla.edu/aab