ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A public historian, Velma Maia Thomas is the creator and curator of the Black Holocaust Exhibit, a collection of original documents on slavery and resistance housed at the Shrines of the Black Madonna Cultural Center and Bookstore in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to the Lest We Forget trilogy, she is the author of several other works, including No Man Can Hinder: The Journey from Slavery to Emancipation Through Song, and is co-author of Emancipation Proclamation: Forever Free.

Velma has served as keynote speaker at universities, libraries, museums, and conferences across the nation. She was selected as a subject expert for the documentary Underground Railroad: The William Still Story, featured on PBS, and has served as a scholar in residence at the historic Penn Center on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, as an adjunct professor in the Department of African American Studies at Georgia State University, and as an instructor at the NEH Summer Institute “America’s Reconstruction: The Untold Story,” Beaufort County, South Carolina.

Velma holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Howard University, a master’s degree in political science from Emory University, and a graduate-level certificate in heritage preservation from Georgia State University. She continues to research and write on African American history.