Frances Jones-Sneed is an emeritus professor of history (Ph.D., University of Missouri) and former Director of Women Studies at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) in North Adams, Massachusetts. Jones-Sneed has taught and researched local history for over thirty years. She directed three National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants on the shaping role of place in African American biography. She also spearheaded a national conference on African American biography in September 2006. She is co-director of the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Heritage Trail and a former board member of Mass Humanities, the Samuel Harrison Society, the Berkshire Chapter of the NAACP, and the W.E.B. Du Bois Center for Freedom and Democracy. She was a 2008 NEH Summer Fellow at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University. She is currently editing the autobiography of Rev. Samuel Harrison, a 19th-century Black minister and a teacher’s guide for W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk.