Lillian S. Williams, PhD is associate professor of history in the Africana and American Studies Department at the University at Buffalo, SUNY where she teaches courses on gender, urbanization and history. Professor Williams has served in several department and university administrative positions including department chair, director of community engagement executive and Policy Committee member and the Gender Institute. She serves on executive boards of the Trailblazing Women of Erie County, the Michigan Street African American Heritage Commission, the Afro-American Historical Association of the Niagara Frontier, the National Underground Railroad Heritage Center and the National Collaborative on Women’s Suffrage Sites. Her numerous awards include the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, fellow in the New York Academy of History at Columbia University, and the Buffalo History Museum’s prestigious Red Jacket Award. Williams is author of Strangers in the Land of Paradise:The Creation of an African America Community, Buffalo, New York, 1900-1940; The Bridge to the Future: The History of Diversity in Girl Scouting, and editor of the Records of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. Currently, Williams is writing a biography of Buffalo suffragist and human rights activist Mary Burnett Talbert.