June Jordan (1936−2002) was a poet, activist, journalist, essayist, and teacher, and the author of more than twenty-five works of poetry, fiction, essays, and children's books. Active in the civil rights, feminist, antiwar, and gay and lesbian rights movements, she was a professor of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she founded the influential poetry program Poetry for the People. Among her honors were a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a National Book Award nomination, and a congressional citation for her outstanding contributions to literature, the progressive movement, and the civil rights movement.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs (editor, introducer) is writing a biography of June Jordan and is the author of Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde and Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Animals, for which she won a Whiting Award. In 2023 she won the Windham Campbell Prize for her poetry. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.