Adele Logan Alexander is a professor of history at George Washington University. She has contributed to many journals and essay collections and is the author of Ambiguous Lives: Free Women of Color in Rural Georgia, 1789-1879. Raised in New York City and educated at Radcliffe College and Howard University, she dotes on her children and grandchildren and lives in Washington, D. C., with her husband, former Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander.