Zebulon Vance Miletsky, Ph. D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and History at Stony Brook University (SUNY) specializing in recent African-American History, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, Urban History, Mixed Race, and Biracial Identity. In addition to his earlier work on Mixed Race, Miletsky’s major project has been the Boston School Desegregation Crisis and the parent-led civil rights movement in Boston. His book Before Busing: A History of Boston’s Long Black Freedom Struggle was published by the University of North Carolina Press in December of 2022. It has been well received and was featured in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education as a book “of interest to African American scholars.” He is also the author of numerous articles, reviews, essays and book chapters. His articles have appeared in the Trotter Review, the Historical Journal of Massachusetts, the Journal of Civil and Human Rights and the Journal of Urban History. He has been a regular contributor to the award-winning blog Black Perspectives, hosted by the African American Intellectual Historical Society (AAIHS) for which he co-authored “How Displacement and Gentrification are Remaking Boston” (2017) among other pieces. He has written op-eds for Diverse Issues in Higher Education, BK Nation and the BK Reader. Originally from Boston, Miletsky received his Ph.D. in African American Studies with a concentration in History from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2008. There, he was trained as a historian by some of the best thinkers in the field of African American Studies, many of whom are veterans of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s, 70s and beyond. He has received fellowships from the Northeast Consortium for Faculty Diversity and Case Western Reserve University, where he was, respectively, a Minority Dissertation Fellow at Monmouth University and a Post-Doctoral Fellow in African American Studies in the Department of History. He has made appearances on NBC4 New York, the PBS show American Experience and has been quoted by NBC News, TheRoot.com, and many others. Miletsky was awarded a “Game Changer Award” from the Long Island Area NAACP branches at their Annual Freedom Luncheon in 2020 for his “work in Civil Rights in Long Island.” He is a voting member of the Citywide Education Council (CEC) for District 32 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the school board for the City of New York, for which he was appointed by the Brooklyn Borough President. In 2021 he was honored by the Town of Brookhaven Black History Commission “for leadership and service to the community as a role model to the next generation.” A proclamation to this effect was read in which February 5th was declared “Dr. Zebulon Miletsky Day” in the Town of Brookhaven, New York. Dr. Miletsky was selected to give the annual John Hope Franklin Lecture at Adelphi University for Black History Month of 2023 for which he also received several proclamations. He was awarded the Civil Rights and Humanitarian Award for his book and social justice work at the Black Authors Festival in Sag Harbor, New York in August of 2024. He lives in Brooklyn.