Franklin Knight, born in Jamaica in 1942, is a professor of Atlantic History in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins, having started teaching in 1973. He was the first African-American professor to be tenured at the university and has received numerous awards and honors for his academic achievements. Professor Knight has published multiple books and articles, as well as directed the History of African Americans at the Johns Hopkins Institutions project. In this oral history, Knight discusses the history of the History Department and the university during his tenure at Hopkins, as well as his own experiences with Latin American scholarship and teaching. This oral history is part of the Mame Warren oral histories series.

Dr. David Cohen is currently Emeritus Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan. While completing his Ph.D. in African history at the University of London, he joined the Johns Hopkins History Department in 1968. Along with Jack Greene, Cohen helped to establish the Atlantic Program in History and Culture, which combined historical and anthropological approaches to the study of the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Cohen describes borrowing from Philip Curtin's tropical history program at the University of Wisconsin, working with Greene, Sidney Mintz, and Richard Price, the influence of Clifford Geertz, and the Atlantic Program as an institutional and intellectual model for similar programs adopted at other universities. This oral history is part of the Hopkins Retrospective oral histories series.