Congressman John Lewis (1940-2020) was a leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and played a key role in the struggle to end segregation. Despite more than 40 arrests, physical attacks, and serious injuries, John Lewis remained a devoted advocate of the philosophy of nonviolence. He was the author of Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of a Movement, which was an autobiography of his activism, and was the recipient of numerous awards from national and international institutions including the Lincoln Medal, the John F. Kennedy "Profile in Courage" Lifetime Achievement Award (the only of its kind ever awarded), and the NAACP Spingarn Medal, among many others.

Poet, activist, mother and professor Nikki Giovanni was born in 1943, in Knoxville, Tennessee. Over the span of thirty years, Nikki has received nineteen honorary degrees from colleges and universities.

JON MEACHAM is the author of American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, which won the Pulitzer Prizeand the author of theNew York Times bestsellers Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship and American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation

He is also most recently the editor of American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic The Civil War. He lives in New York City with his wife and children.

Doris Kearns Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in history for No Ordinary Time. She is also the author of the bestselling Wait till Next Year, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. She lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband Richard Goodwin.