Julie A. Gallagher, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History, Penn State University, Brandywine, author of Black Women and Politics in New York City. Read here.

Raymond T. Diamond, James Carville Alumni Professor and Jules F. & Frances L. Landry Distinguished Professor, Louisiana State University Law Center. (Diamond was three years behind the author at Yale during the era the author writes about in the Preface to Boss of Black Brooklyn.) Read here.

John Mollenkopf, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology, Director, Center for Urban Research, The Graduate Center, CUNY. Read here.

Jerome Krase, Brooklyn College Professor Emeritus, author of Race, Class, and Gentrification in Brooklyn: A View from the Street, as well as Ethnicity and Machine Politics. Read here.

Kirkley C. Sands, Ph.D., Dean of Faculty at Codrington College in Barbados, the oldest school of theology in the Americas. Read here.

The Brooklyn Oldtimers Foundation, half century old group of retired teachers and other civil servants from Central (Black) Brooklyn The Oldtimers have given hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships to college students from Black Brooklyn. Read here.

Letitia James, first black woman to hold any citywide office when she became New York City Public Advocate; candidate to be New York State Attorney General. Read here.

Edwidge Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, (an Oprah's Book Club pick) and many other acclaimed books, fiction and non-fiction. Read here.

Clarence Taylor, Professor Emeritus, Baruch College, author of The Black Churches of Brooklyn from the 19th Century to the Civil Rights Era and other books. Read here.

Paul Moses author of An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York's Irish and Italians and The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam, and Francis of Assisi's Mission of Peace. Read here.

David N. Dinkins, 106th Mayor, City of New York. Read here.

Yanick Rice Lamb, Chair of the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at Howard University, and author of Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson. Read here.

Everson W. Hull, Ph.D., Ambassador for St. Kitts and Nevis to the Organization of the American States. Read here.