CHANGING PLACES

FUGITIVE IDENTITIES

Jessica A Krug, an activist and associate professor at Washington DC’s George Washington University, has admitted to having adopted a pretended Black Latina identity for several years, despite actually having a white background. Dr Krug is attached to GWU’s Department of History, where she taught world history, African history, the Black Atlantic and the African Diaspora. Her departmental profile describes her areas of expertise as Africa, Latin America, African American history, the Early Modern world, and imperialism and colonialism.

She received financial assistance from cultural institutions such as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to support her writing of her first book, (2018), about resistance during the transatlantic slave trade, specifically focused on Angola, Brazil and Colombia. Dr Krug dedicated the book to “my ancestors, unknown, unnamed… Those whose names I cannot say for their own safety, whether in my barrio, in Angola, or in Brazil.” She calls her book “a love letter for