Black Youth Project has joined forces with AirGo for a year-long #BYPSpotlight series, featuring our favorite Black academics and activists. First up is Barbara Ransby, whose footprint on the Chicago and global social movement landscape is inimitable. A Professor of History, Gender and Women's Studies, and African American Studies at UIC, Barbara has grounded both organizing and scholarship for liberation in the lineages and lessons of Black women. She wrote the highly acclaimed biography Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, as well as two other books, and is the driving force behind the R3 Coalition, which has pushed forward some of the most meaningful coalition-building Chicago has seen in recent years.