Lillian S. Williams is associate professor and chair of the University at Buffalo’s African American Studies Department. She received her Ph.D., M.A., and B.A. from the University. Her research focuses on institutions, ethnicity, biography, and women’s history. She has consulted on a diversity of historical projects, including work with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Association of Buffalo and Erie County. She has served as a consultant on the New York State Museum’s permanent exhibit “Black Capital: Harlem in the 1920s.” Her consultancies are many, and focus on diversity. Among them was membership on the mayor of Washington D.C.’s technical advisory committee for the Twenty Year Comprehensive Plan. She chaired its subcommittee on housing. Dr. Williams is author of the widely acclaimed Strangers in the Land of Paradise: The Creation of an African American Community, Buffalo, New York, 1900-1940 (Indiana University Press, 1999), academic articles, and book chapters. She is editor of the microfilm edition of the papers of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs and associate editor of the sixteen volume series Black Women in American History. She has received many academic honors, including the SUNY Chancellor's Excellence in Teaching Award. For additional information, go to: http://wings.buffalo.edu/academic/department/AandL/aas/faculty/williams/williams.htm.