Allida Black is Research Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University and Project Director and Editor of The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, a project designed to preserve, teach and apply Eleanor Roosevelt’s writings and discussions of human rights and democratic politics. Professor Black is the recipient of the Millennium Medal from The George Washington University, the 2001 Person of Vision Award from the Arlington County Commission on the Status of Women, and the James A. Jordan Award for Outstanding Dedication and Excellence in Teaching from Penn State University, Harrisburg. She has received the JNG Finley Postdoctoral Fellowship at George Mason University, a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as fellowships from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, the Harry Truman Foundation and the United States Information Agency. She received her Ph.D. from the George Washington University in 1993 and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from DePaul University in 2001.

Her publications include four books — Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism(Columbia University Press, November 1995), “What I Want to LeaveBehind:” Democracy and the Selected Articles of Eleanor Roosevelt (Carlson Publishing, April 1995); Courage In A Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt (Columbia University Press, 1999), and with Jewel Fenzi, Democratic Women: An Oral History of the Women’s National Democratic Club (WNDC Educational Foundation, 2000) and as well as a variety of articles. Columbia University Press will publish and First Women: Power, Image and Politics from Betty Ford through Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2005. Oxford University Press will publish E.R.: Eleanor Roosevelt, Politics and the Dream of Democracy and is negotiating contracts for two classroom readers on human rights.