James Oliver Horton is the Benjamin Banneker Professor Emeritus of American Studies and History at George Washington University and historian emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. He is co-author, with Lois E. Horton, of such classic studies as Slavery and the Making of America, Hard Road to Freedom, In Hope of Liberty, and Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory (The New Press). He lives in the Washington, D.C., area.