Brian Jones is an activist, educator, theater performer, and scholar. He earned a bachelor's degree in Theater arts from Brown University in 1995 and a Master’s degree from the City College of New York in 2006. He then completed his Ph. D. in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center in 2018. Brian is currently the Associate Director of Education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. For many years he has been a member of the Board of Directors of Voices of a People’s History of the United States, an organization that tell nontraditional stories about American history. He worked with famous historian Howard Zinn on that project. He has also published extensively, in many periodicals, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Journal of Negro Education, and Chalkbeat. He also served on the New York State Education Department Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Advisory Panel in 2018. For his work in the field of education, Brian is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the Lannan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the City University of New York. Voices of a People’s History of the United States brings to life the extraordinary history of ordinary people who built the movements that made the United States what it is today. Voices is a non-profit arts, education and social justice organization active throughout the United States. It was founded in 2007 by a group of activists, artists and educators, led by Brenda Coughlin, and historian Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove, who together edited the book Voices of a People’s History of the United States. Today, Voices employs live performances, as well as educational programs based on primary source materials, to illustrate the struggles that ended slavery and Jim Crow segregation, advanced women’s rights and gay liberation, created unions and the eight-hour work day, protested war and the genocide of Native Americans, and worked to right the wrongs of the day. Performances bring to life actual words from U.S. history, from the anonymous and the renowned. Past readings have included the speeches of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the defiant call to arms of Shawnee leader Tecumseh, testimony of nineteenth-century factory girls on strike in the Lowell mills, and others from the book Voices of a People’s History of the United States, as well as from the present day. Since 2003, there have been more than a hundred Voices performances across the United States. In addition, we have staged productions of The People Speak in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia. Performers range from students and community organizers to artists such as Black Thought from The Roots, Staceyann Chin, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Steve Earle, Wyclef Jean, Sarah Jones, Viggo Mortensen, Sandra Oh, Robert Redford, Tim Robbins, Mark Ruffalo, Wallace Shawn, Patti Smith, Kurt Vonnegut, Kerry Washington, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, and Alfre Woodard.