Jelani Cobb
William Jelani Cobb (born August 21, 1969) is an American writer, author and educator, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Institute for African American Studies at University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut.
Life
William Jelani Cobb was born in Queens, New York, on August 21, 1969, the youngest of four children. Literacy and education were valued highly in the Cobb household. Both of Cobb's parents had migrated from the South, where they did not have access to high-quality schools. As a result, they were determined to give reading and learning important places in their family life. Cobb counted being taught to write at an early age by his father, Willie Lee Cobb—an electrician with a third-grade education—among his earliest memories. On his website, Cobb described his father's "huge hand engulfing mine as he showed me how to scrawl the alphabet." Cobb has been writing ever since.