Who Is Dr. Frank?

• Co-Founder of the National Black Justice Coalition

• Award-winning professor and creator of America’s first university course on Black Lives Matter (2015-2021)

• James Baldwin Scholar and Co-Host of the Baldwin Estate-endorsed literary podcast Finding James Baldwin

• Former Special Assistant to legendary civil rights attorney Johnnie Cochran

Dr. Frank Leon Roberts is a nationally recognized professor, public media commentator, and social justice organizer whose work bridges the worlds of higher education and grassroots activism. A tenure-line professor of English and African American Studies at Amherst College, he has spent more than two decades helping students, institutions, and communities better understand the political, cultural, and artistic traditions of Black life in America.

Trained as a scholar of Black literature and culture, Dr. Frank is currently completing two scholarly book-length projects on the life and legacy of James Baldwin. His upcoming book, Fugitive Stagecraft: James Baldwin on the Minor Frequencies, examines Baldwin’s long-overlooked work for the stage, revealing how Baldwin used theater, performance, and public address to grapple with race, power, and moral responsibility. His second forthcoming book, James Baldwin’s Magpie Years: A Harlem Preacher’s Literary Coming of Age, is an edited volume backed by the Baldwin Estate that is based on his discovery of Baldwin’s full (and previously lost) writings as teenage Pentecostal preacher. The story of that literary recovery serves as the foundation of his critically acclaimed literary podcast Finding James Baldwin (co-hosted with Aldo B. Martin). Dr. Frank is one of eight scholars officially endorsed by the Baldwin Estate as a public ambassador for Baldwin’s legacy.

In addition to his scholarly work, Dr. Frank is the founder of multiple award-winning social justice organizations, including the National Black Justice Coalition (Washington, D.C.) and the Baldwin-Hansberry Project (Harlem, NY). In 2015, he made history as the first professor in the United States to teach a full university course on the Black Lives Matter movement, developed in direct collaboration with the Black Lives Matter Global Network. From 2015 to 2021, the course’s public companion curriculum, The Black Lives Matter Syllabus, was adopted by more than 2,000 colleges, universities, and community organizations nationwide, helping shape how the movement has been taught and studied across the country.

Represented by Keppler Speakers Bureau ™ Dr. Frank is a sought-after speaker who has delivered keynote addresses for Black History Month and Martin Luther King Jr. Day at hundreds of institutions in the U.S. and abroad. His work and commentary have appeared on CNN, NPR, The Black News Network, The Huffington Post, and other national media outlets.

He began his career as a political organizer as a teenager, mobilizing disenfranchised voters in the aftermath of the 2000 Bush–Gore election. While still an undergraduate, he served as Special Assistant to Johnnie Cochran, working on early legal efforts connected to the modern reparations movement.

Dr. Frank earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from NYU (where he studied under the tutelage of scholars Jose Esteban Munoz and Fred Moten) and also separately spent three years as a graduate student in Religion and African Diaspora Studies at Yale Divinity School. His honors include NYU’s Changemaker Alumni of the Year Award (2020), the Roddenberry Fellowship, Ford Fellowship, the Distinguished Teaching Award for Social Justice at The New School, and induction into the Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers / Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College, among many others. He is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.

A native son of New York City, Dr. Frank divides his time equally between Harlem and New England.