Jelani Cobb
| Jelani Cobb | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 21, 1969 Queens, New York |
| Occupation | Writer, author, educator |
William Jelani Cobb (born August 21, 1969) is an American writer, author and educator. A professor of journalism at Columbia University, Cobb was previously an associate professor of history and director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut from 2012 to 2016. Since 2015, he has been a staff writer at The New Yorker.
William Jelani Cobb was born in Queens, New York, on August 21, 1969, the youngest of four children. Both of Cobb's parents had migrated from the South, where they did not have access to high-quality schools. As a result, they were determined to give reading and learning important places in their family life. Cobb counted being taught to write at an early age by his father, Willie Lee Cobb—an electrician with a third-grade education—among his earliest memories. On his website, Cobb described his father's "huge hand engulfing mine as he showed me how to scrawl the alphabet."
Cobb was educated at Jamaica High School, Howard University in Washington, D.C., and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he received a PhD in American history in May 2003 under the supervision of David Levering Lewis.
Cobb has been the recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright and Ford Foundation.
While studying at Howard, Cobb began his professional writing career, first publishing at a periodical called One that existed in Washington for about a year. One gave Cobb, a writing novice, an open forum to write about whatever he wanted. As his journalistic skills developed, he began contributing to the Washington City Paper, Washington's alternative weekly. His first national outlet was YSB Magazine, part of the Black Entertainment Television, Inc. (BET) media empire, beginning in 1993. He also became more politically active during this time, and was involved with an organization, along with Ras Baraka, son of acclaimed poet Amiri Baraka, that took over Howard's administration building in 1989. It was around this time that Cobb, seeking to connect more with African tradition, decided to add "Jelani"—a Swahili word meaning "powerful"—to his name.
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