Kenneth Janken is a professor of African American and Diaspora studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 1991. He is the author of three books, most recently The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice, and the Rise of Black Politics in the 1970s (UNC Press, 2016).
Born and raised in Los Angeles, his family’s roots in California go back to the first years of the 20th century. He was educated entirely in public schools, and earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in history from Hunter College of the City University of New York and his Ph.D. in American history from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He lives in Chapel Hill and is married to Pat Puglisi. They have a son, who graduated from Appalachian State University and now lives in Brooklyn, NY, and a daughter, who is a sophomore at UNC Chapel Hill.