Robert F. Jefferson is an associate professor of history at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree from Old Dominion University, and a bachelors’ degree from Elon University. Professor Jefferson has taught at the University of Iowa and Wayne State University.  His articles on African American GIs and their communities during the Second World War have appeared in the Journal of Family History, Quaderni Storici (Bologna), Contours:  A Journal of the African Diaspora, and the Historian. 

He is the author of Fighting for Hope:  African American Troops of the 93rd Infantry Division in World War II and Postwar America (The Johns Hopkins University Press, October, 2008) and is currently working on two book projects, “Black Philoctetes in the Age of Jim Crow:  African American Ex-GIs, Race, and Disability in Modern American Wars,” and “Caravan Leader:  Ulysses G. Lee and the Black Aesthetic, 1913-1969.”