Claude Clegg's work focuses on African American history as well as the African diaspora of the Atlantic world, exploring the ways in which people of African descent have created and imagined communities and identities outside Africa. He is the author of three books, including "An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad" (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), "The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia" (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), and "Troubled Ground: A Tale of Murder, Lynching, and Reckoning in the New South" (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010). He is currently working on a book that examines the ways African Americans have experienced and interpreted the Obama presidency.Claude Clegg holds the Lyle V. Jones Distinguished Professorship in the Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also has an appointment in the History department of UNC-Chapel Hill.